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THE SACRED FOUNT 



THE SACRED FOUNT 



BY 



HENRY JAMES 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1901 

t^3 



Library of Coticrreeia 

Two Copies •^fCEl^''^o t .^(p 



^ 



^^. 



F-B 7 1901 ,,^^^ 
FIRST COPY 



Copyright, 1901, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROW OIWOTOIIV 

PRINTING AND eOOKBINOINQ COMPANY 

MEW YORK 



THE SACRED FOUNT 



IT was an occasion, I felt — the prospect of a large 
party — to look out at the station for others, 
possible friends and even possible enemies, who 
might be going. Such premonitions, it was true, 
bred fears when they failed to breed hopes, though 
it was to be added that there were sometimes, in 
the case, rather happy ambiguities. One was 
glowered at, in the compartment, by people who 
on the morrow, after breakfast, were to prove 
charming; one was spoken to first by people whose 
sociability was subsequently to show as bleak; and 
one built with confidence on others who were never 
to reappear at all — who were only going to Birming- 
ham. As soon as I saw Gilbert Long, some way up 
the platform, however, I knew him as an element. 
It was not so much that the wish was father to the 
thought as that I remembered having already more 
than once met him at Newmarch. He was a friend 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

of the house — he wouldn't be going to Birming- 
ham. I so little expected him, at the same time, 
to recognise me that I stopped short of the carriage 
near which he stood — I looked for a seat that 
wouldn't make us neighbours. 

I had met him at Newmarch only — a place of a 
charm so special as to create rather a bond among 
its guests; but he had always, in the interval, so 
failed to know me that I could only hold him as 
stupid unless I held him as impertinent. He was 
stupid in fact, and in that character had no business 
at Newmarch; but he had also, no doubt, his sys- 
tem, which he applied without discernment. I 
wondered, while I saw my things put into my cor- 
ner, what Newmarch could see in him — for it always 
had to see something before it made a sign. His 
good looks, which were striking, perhaps paid his 
way — his six feet and more of stature, his low-grow- 
ing, tight-curling hair, his big, bare, blooming face. 
He was a fine piece of human furniture — he made 
a small party seem more numerous. This, at least, 
was the impression of him that had revived before 
I stepped out again to the platform, and it armed 
me only at first with surprise when I saw him come 
down to me as if for a greeting. If he had decided 
at last to treat me as an acquaintance made, it was 
none the less a case for letting him come all the 
way. That, accordingly, was what he did, and 
with so clear a conscience, I hasten to add, that 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

at the end of a minute we were talking together 
quite as with the tradition of prompt intimacy. He 
was good-looking enough, I now again saw, but not 
such a model of it as I had seemed to remember; 
on the other hand his manners had distinctly gained 
in ease. He referred to our previous encounters 
and common contacts — he was glad I was going; 
he peeped into my compartment and thought it bet- 
ter than his own. He called a porter, the next min- 
ute, to shift his things, and while his attention was 
so taken I made out some of the rest of the con- 
tingent, who were finding or had already found 
places. 

This lasted till Long came back with his porter, 
as well as with a lady unknown to me and to whom 
he had apparently mentioned that our carriage 
would pleasantly accommodate her. The porter 
carried in fact her dressing-bag, which he put upon 
a seat and the bestowal of which left the lady pres- 
ently free to turn to me with a reproach : " I don't 
think it very nice of you not to speak to me." I 
stared, then caught at her identity through her 
voice; after which I reflected that she might easily 
have thought me the same sort of ass as I had 
thought Long. For she was simply, it appeared, 
Grace Brissenden. We had, the three of us, the 
carriage to ourselves, and we journeyed together 
for more than an hour, during which, in my corner, 
I had my companions opposite. We began at first 

3 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

by talking a little, and then as the train — a fast one 
— ran straight and proportionately bellowed, we 
gave up the effort to compete with its music. 
Meantime, however, we had exchanged with each 
other a fact or two to turn over in silence. Brissen- 
den was coming later — not, indeed, that that was 
such a fact. But his wife was informed — she kne\v 
about the numerous others; she had mentioned, 
while we waited, people and things: that Obert, 
R.A., was somewhere in the train, that her husband 
was to bring on Lady John, and that Mrs. Froome 
and Lord Lutley were in the wondrous new fashion 
— and their servants too, like a single household — 
starting, travelling, arriving together. It came 
back to me as I sat there that when she mentioned 
Lady John as in charge of Brissenden the other 
member of our trio had expressed interest and sur- 
prise — expressed it so as to have made her reply 
with a smile: "Didn't you really know?" This 
passage had taken place on the platform while, 
availing ourselves of our last minute, we hung about 
our door, 

" Why in the world should I know? " 
To which, with good nature, she had simply re- 
turned : " Oh, it's only that I thought you always 
did ! " And they both had looked at me a little 
oddly, as if appealing from each other, " What 
in the world does she mean?" Long might have 
seemed to ask; while Mrs. Brissenden conveyed 

4 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

with light profundity : " You know why he should 
as well as I, don't you? " In point of fact I didn't 
in the least; and what afterwards struck me much 
more as the beginning of my anecdote was a word 
dropped by Long after someone had come up to 
speak to her. I had then given him his cue by 
alluding to my original failure to place her. What 
in the world, in the year or two, had happened to 
her? She had changed so extraordinarily for the 
better. How could a woman who had been plain 
so long become pretty so late? 

It was just what he had been wondering. " I 
didn't place her at first myself. She had to speak 
to me. But I hadn't seen her since her marriage, 
which was — wasn't it? — four or five years ago. 
She's amazing for her age." 

" What then is her age? " 

" Oh — two or three-and-forty." 

" She's prodigious for that. But can it be so 
great?" 

" Isn't it easy to count? " he asked. " Don't 
you remember, when poor Briss married her, how 
immensely she was older? What was it they called 
it? — a case of child-stealing. Everyone made jokes. 
Briss isn't yet thirty." No, I bethought myself, he 
wouldn't be; but I hadn't remembered the differ- 
ence as so great. What I had mainly remembered 
was that she had been rather ugly. At present she 
was rather handsome. Long, however, as to this, 

5 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

didn't agree. " rm bound to say I don't quite call 
it beauty." 

" Oh, I only speak of it as relative. She 
looks so well — and somehow so ' fine.' Why else 
shouldn't we have recognised her? " 

" Why indeed? But it isn't a thing with which 
beauty has to do." He had made the matter out 
with an acuteness for which I shouldn't have given 
him credit. " What has happened to her is simply 
that — well, that nothing has." 

" Nothing has happened? But, my dear man, 
she has been married. That's supposed to be some- 
thing." 

" Yes, but she has been married so little and so 
stupidly. It must be desperately dull to be mar- 
ried to poor Briss. His comparative youth doesn't, 
after all, make more of him. He's nothing but 
what he is. Her clock has simply stopped. She 
looks no older — that's all." 

" Ah, and a jolly good thing too, when you start 
where she did. But I take your discrimination," I 
added, " as just. The only thing is that if a woman 
doesn't grow older she may be said to grow 
younger; and if she grows younger she may be 
supposed to grow prettier. That's all — except, of 
course, that it strikes me as charming also for Bris- 
senden himself. He had the face, I seem to recall, 
of a baby; so that if his wife did flaunt her fifty 
years ! " 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Oh," Long broke in, " it wouldn't have mat- 
tered to him if she had. That's the awfulness, don't 
you see? of the married state. People have to get 
used to each other's charms as well as to their 
faults. He wouldn't have noticed. It's only you 
and I who do, and the charm of it is for us." 

" What a lucky thing then," I laughed, " that, 
with Brissenden so out of it and relegated to the 
time-table's obscure hereafter, it should be you and 
I who enjoy her ! " I had been struck in what he 
said with more things than I could take up, and I 
think I must have looked at him, while he talked, 
with a slight return of my first mystification. He 
talked as I had never heard him — less and less like 
the heavy Adonis who had so often " cut " me; and 
while he did so I was proportionately more con- 
scious of the change in him. He noticed in fact 
after a little the vague confusion of my gaze and 
asked me — with complete good nature — why I 
stared at him so hard. I sufficiently disembroiled 
myself to reply that I could only be fascinated by 
the way he made his points; to which he — with the 
same sociability — made answer that he, on the con- 
trary, more than suspected me, clever and critical 
as I was, of amusement at his artless prattle. He 
stuck none the less to his idea that what we had 
been discussing was lost on Brissenden. " Ah, 
then I hope," I said, " that at least Lady John 
isn't!" 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"Oh, Lady John !" And he turned away 

as if there were either too much or too Httle to say 
about her. 

I found myself engaged again with Mrs. Briss 
while he was occupied with a newspaper-boy — and 
engaged, oddly, in very much the free view of him 
that he and I had just taken of herself. She put 
it to me frankly that she had never seen a man so 
improved: a confidence that I met with alacrity, 
as it showed me that, under the same impression, 
I had not been astray. She had only, it seemed, 
on seeing him, made him out with a great effort. I 
took in this confession, but I repaid it. " He hinted 
to me that he had not known you more easily." 

" More easily than you did? Oh, nobody does 
that; and, to be quite honest, I've got used to it 
and don't mind. People talk of our changing 
every seven years, but they make me feel as if I 
changed every seven minutes. What will you have, 
at any rate, and how can I help it? It's the grind 
of life, the wear and tear of time and misfortune. 
And, you know, I'm ninet3^-three." 

" How young you must feel," I answered, " to 
care to talk of your age ! I envy you, for nothing 
v;ould induce me to let you know mine. You look, 
you see, just twenty-five." 

It evidently too. what I said, gave her pleasure — 
a pleasure that she caught and held. " Well, you 
can't say I dress it." 

8 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" No, you dress, I make out, ninety-three. If 
you would only dress twenty-five you'd look fif- 
teen." 

" Fifteen in a schoolroom charade ! " She 
laughed at this happily enough. " Your compli- 
ment 'to my taste is odd. I know, at all events," 
she went on, " what's the difference in Mr. Long." 

" Be so good then, for my relief, as to name it." 

" Well, a very clever woman has for some time 
past " 

" Taken " — this beginning was of course enough 
— " a particular interest in him? Do you mean 
Lady John? " I inquired; and, as she evidently did, 
I rather demurred. " Do you call Lady John a 
very clever woman? " 

" Surely. That's why I kindly arranged that, as 
she was to take, I happened to learn, the next 
train, Guy should come with her." 

"You arranged it?" I wondered. "She's not 
so clever as you then." 

" Because you feel that she wouldn't, or couldn't? 
No doubt she wouldn't have made the same point 
of it — for more than one reason. Poor Guy hasn't 
pretensions — has nothing but his youth and his 
beauty. But that's precisely why Fm sorry for him 
and try whenever I can to give him a lift. Lady 
John's company is, you see, a lift." 

" You mean it has so unmistakably been one to 
Long? " 

9 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Yes — it has positively given him a mind and a 
tongue. That's what has come over him." 

" Then," I said, " it's a most extraordinary case 
— such as one really has never met." 

" Oh, but," she objected, " it happens." 

" Ah, so very seldom ! Yes — I've positively 
never met it. Are you very sure," I insisted, " that 
Lady John is the influence? " 

" I don't mean to say, of course," she replied, 
" that he looks fluttered if you mention her, that 
he doesn't in fact look as blank as a pickpocket. 
But that proves nothing — or rather, as they're 
known to be always together, and she from morn- 
ing till night as pointed as a hat-pin, it proves just 
what one sees. One simply takes it in." 

I turned the picture round. " They're scarcely 
together when she's together wath Brissenden." 

" Ah, that's only once in a way. It's a thing 
that from time to time such people — don't you 
know? — make a particular point of: they cultivate, 
to cover their game, the appearance of other little 
friendships. It puts outsiders off the scent, and 
the real thing meanwhile goes on. Besides, you 
yourself acknowledge the effect. If she hasn't 
made him clever, what has she made him? She 
has given him, steadily, more and more intellect." 

" Well, you may be right," I laughed, " though 
you speak as if it were cod-liver oil. Does she ad- 
minister it, as a daily dose, by the spoonful? or 

lO 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

only as a drop at a time? Does he take it in his 
food? Is he supposed to know? The difficulty 
for me is simply that if I've seen the handsome 
grow ugly and the ugly handsome, the fat grow 
thin and the thin fat, the short grow long and the 
long short; if I've even, Hkewise, seen the clever, 
as I've too fondly, at least, supposed them, grow 
stupid : so have I nat seen — no, not once in all my 
days — the stupid grow clever." 

It was a question, none the less, on which she 
could perfectly stand up. " All I can say is then 
that you'll have, the next day or two, an interest- 
ing new experience." 

" It zvill be interesting," I declared while I 
thought — " and all the more if I make out for my- 
self that Lady John is the agent." 

" You'll make it out if you talk to her — that is, 
I mean, if you make her talk. You'll see how she 
can." 

" She keeps her wit then," I asked, " in spite of 
all she pumps into others? " 

" Oh, she has enough for two ! " 

" I'm immensely struck with yours," I replied, 
" as well as with your generosity. I've seldom 
seen a woman take so handsome a view of an- 
other." 

" It's because I Hke to be kind ! " she said with 
the best faith in the world; to which I could only 
return, as we entered the train, that it was a kind- 

u 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ness Lady John would doubtless appreciate. Long 
rejoined us, and we ran, as I have said, our course; 
which, as I have also noted, seemed short to me 
in the light of such a blaze of suggestion. To 
each of my companions — and the fact stuck out of 
them — something unprecedented had happened. 



12 



II 



THE day was as fine and the scene as fair at 
Newmarch as the party was numerous and 
various; and my memory associates with the rest 
of the long afternoon many renewals of acquaint- 
ance and much sitting and strolling, for snatches of 
talk, in the long shade of great trees and through 
the straight walks of old gardens. A couple of 
hours thus passed, and fresh accessions enriched 
the picture. There were persons I was curious of 
— of Lady John, for instance, of whom I promised 
myself an early view; but we were apt to be 
carried away in currents that reflected new images 
and sufficiently beguiled impatience. I recover, 
all the same, a full sequence of impressions, each of 
which, I afterwards saw, had been appointed to 
help all the others. If my anecdote, as I have men- 
tioned, had begun, at Paddington, at a particular 
moment, it gathered substance step by step and 
without missing a link. The links, in fact, should 
I count them all, would make too long a chain. 
They formed, nevertheless, the happiest little chap- 
ter of accidents, though a series of which I can 
scarce give more than the general effect. 

13 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

One of the first accidents was that, before dinner, 
I met Ford Obert wandering a little apart with 
Mrs. Server, and that, as they were known to me 
as agreeable acquaintances, I should have faced 
them with confidence had I not immediately drawn 
from their sequestered air the fear of interrupting 
them. Mrs. Server was always lovely and Obert 
always expert; the latter straightway pulled up, 
however, making me as welcome as if their con- 
verse had dropped. She was extraordinarily pretty, 
markedly responsive, conspicuously charming, but 
he gave me a look that really seemed to say: 
" Don't — there's a good fellow — leave me any 
longer alone with her!" I had met her at New- 
march before — it was indeed only so that I had met 
her — and I knew how she was valued there. I also 
knew that an aversion to pretty women — numbers 
of whom he had preserved for a grateful posterity — 
was his sign neither as man nor as artist; the effect 
of all of which was to make me ask myself what she 
could have been doing to him. Making love, pos- 
sibly — yet from that he would scarce have appealed. 
She wouldn't, on the other hand, have given him 
her company only to be inhuman. I joined them, 
at all events, learning from Mrs. Server that she 
had come by a train previous to my own; and we 
made -a slow trio till, at a turn of the prospect, we 
came upon another group. It consisted of Mrs. 
Froome and Lord Lutley and of Gilbert Long and 

14 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

Lady John — mingled and confounded, as might be 
said, not assorted according to tradition. Long 
and Mrs. Froome came first, I recollect, together, 
and his lordship turned away from Lady John on 
seeing me rather directly approach her. She had 
become for me, on the spot, as interesting as, while 
we travelled, I had found my two friends in the 
train. As the source of the flow of " intellect " 
that had transmuted our young man, she had every 
claim to an earnest attention; and I should soon 
have been ready to pronounce that she rewarded it 
as richly as usual. She was indeed, as Mrs. Briss 
had said, as pointed as a hat-pin, and I bore in mind 
that lady's injunction to look in her for the answer 
to our riddle. 

The riddle, I may mention, sounded afresh to my 
ear in Gilbert Long's gay voice; it hovered there — 
before me, beside, behind me, as we all paused — 
in his light, restless step, a nervous animation that 
seemed to multiply his presence. He became real- 
ly, for the moment, under this impression, the thing 
I was most conscious of; I heard him, I felt him 
even while I exchanged greetings with the sor- 
ceress by whose wand he had been touched. To 
be touched myself was doubtless not quite what I 
wanted; yet I wanted, distinctly, a glimpse; so that, 
with the smart welcome Lady John gave me, I 
might certainly have felt that I was on the way to 
get it. The note of Long's predominance deep- 

15 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ened during these minutes in a manner I can't de- 
scribe, and I continued to feel that though we pre- 
tended to talk it was to him only we listened. He 
had us all in hand; he controlled for the moment all 
our attention and our relations. He was in short, 
as a consequence of our attitude, in possession of 
the scene to a tune he couldn't have dreamed of a 
year or two before — inasmuch as at that period he 
could have figured at no such eminence without 
making a fool of himself. And the great thing was 
that if his eminence was now so perfectly graced 
he yet knew less than any of us what was the mat- 
ter with him. He was unconscious of how he had 
" come out " — which was exactly what sharpened 
my wonder. Lady John, on her side, was thor- 
oughly conscious, and I had a fancy that she looked 
at me to measure how far / was. I cared, naturally, 
not in the least what she guessed; her interest for 
me was all in the operation of her influence. I am 
afraid I watched to catch it in the act — watched 
her with a curiosity of which she might well have 
become aware. 

What an intimacy, what an intensity of relation, 
I said to myself, so successful a process implied ! It 
was of course familiar enough that when people 
were so deeply in love they rubbed ofif on each 
other — that a great pressure of soul to soul usually 
left on either side a sufficient show of tell-tale 
traces. But for Long to have been so stamped as 

i6 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I found him, how the pliant wax must have been 
prepared and the seal of passion applied ! What an 
affection the woman working such a change in him 
must have managed to create as a preface to her 
influence ! With what a sense of her charm she 
must have paved the way for it ! Strangely enough, 
however — it was even rather irritating — there was 
nothing more than usual in Lady John to assist my 
view of the height at which the pair so evoked must 
move. These things — the way other people could 
feel about each other, the power not one's self, in 
the given instance, that made for passion — were of 
course at best the mystery of mysteries; still, there 
were cases in which fancy, sounding the depths or 
the shallows, could at least drop the lead. Lady 
John, perceptibly, was no such case; imagination, 
in her presence, was but the weak wing of the in- 
sect that bumps against the glass. She was pretty, 
prompt, hard, and, in a way that was special to her, 
a mistress at once of " culture " and of slang. She 
was like a hat — with one of Mrs. Briss's hat-pins — 
askew on the bust of Virgil. Her ornamental in- 
formation — as strong as a coat of furniture-polish — 
almost knocked you down. What I felt in her now 
more than ever was that, having a reputation for 
" point " to keep up, she was always under arms, 
with absences and anxieties like those of a celebrity 
at a public dinner. She thought too much of her 
" speech " — of how soon it would have to come. 

17 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It was none the less wonderful, however, that, as 
Grace Brissenden had said, she should still find her- 
self with intellect to spare — have lavished herself 
by precept and example on Long and yet have re- 
mained for each other interlocutor as fresh as the 
clown bounding into the ring. She cracked, for my 
benefit, as many jokes and turned as many somer- 
saults as might have been expected; after which I 
thought it fair to let her off. We all faced again to 
the house, for dressing and dinner were in sight. 

I found myself once more, as we moved, with 
Mrs. Server, and I remember rejoicing that, sym- 
pathetic as she showed herself, she didn't think it 
necessary to be, like Lady John, always " ready." 
She was delightfully handsome — handsomer than 
ever; slim, fair, fine, with charming pale eyes and 
splendid auburn hair. I said to myself that I 
hadn't done her justice; she hadn't organised her 
forces, was a little helpless and vague, but there was 
ease for the weary in her happy nature and her 
peculiar grace. These last were articles on which, 
five minutes later, before the house, where we still 
had a margin, I was moved to challenge Ford 
Obert. 

" What was the matter just now — when, though 
you were so fortunately occupied, you yet seemed 
to call me to the rescue?" 

" Oh," he laughed, " I was only occupied in be- 
ing frightened ! " 

i8 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"But at what?" 

" Well, at a sort of sense that she wanted to make 
love to me." 

I reflected. " Mrs. Server? Does Mrs. Server 
make love? " 

" It seemed to me," my friend repHed, " that she 
began on it to yoii as soon as she got hold of you. 
Weren't you aware? " 

I debated afresh; I didn't know that I had been. 
" Not to the point of terror. She's so gentle and 
so appealing. Even if she took one in hand with 
violence, moreover," I added, " I don't see why ter- 
ror — given so charming a person — should be the 
result. It's flattering." 

" Ah, you're brave," said Obert. 

" I didn't know you were ever timid. How can 
you be, in your profession? Doesn't it come back 
to me, for that matter, that — only the other year — 
you painted her? " 

" Yes, I faced her to that extent. But she's 
different now." 

I scarcely made it out. " In what way different? 
She's as charming as ever." 

As if even for his own satisfaction my friend 
seemed to think a little. " Well, her affections 
were not then, I imagine, at her disposal. I judge 
that that's what it must have been. They were 
fixed — with intensity; and it made the difference 
with inc. Her imagination had, for the time, rested 

19 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

its wing. At present it's ready for flight — it seeks 
a fresh perch. It's trying. Take care." 

" Oh, I don't flatter myself," I laughed, " that 
I've only to hold out my hand ! At any rate," I 
went on, " / sha'n't call for help." 

He seemed to think again. *' I don't know. 
You'll see." 

" If I do I shall see a great deal more than I now 
suspect." He wanted to get off to dress, but I still 
held him. " Isn't she wonderfully lovely? " 

" Oh ! " he simply exclaimed. 

" Isn't she as lovely as she seems? " 

But he had already broken away. '* What has 
that to do with it?" 

" What has anything, then? " 

" She's too beastly unhappy." 

" But isn't that just one's advantage? " 

" No. It's uncanny." And he escaped. 

The question had at all events brought us indoors 
and so far up our staircase as to where it branched 
towards Obert's room. I followed it to my cor- 
ridor, with which other occasions had made me ac- 
quainted, and I reached the door on which I ex- 
pected to find my card of designation. This door, 
however, was open, so as to show me, in momentary 
possession of the room, a gentleman, unknown to 
me, who, in unguided quest of his quarters, ap- 
peared to have arrived from the other end of the 
passage. He had just seen, as the property of an- 

20 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

other, my unpacked things, with which he imme- 
diately connected me. He moreover, to my sur- 
prise, on my entering, sounded my name, in 
response to which I could only at first remain blank. 
It was in fact not till I had begun to help him place 
himself that, correcting my blankness, I knew him 
for Guy Brissenden. He had been put by himself, 
for some reason, in the bachelor wing and, explor- 
ing at hazard, had mistaken the signs. By the 
time we found his servant and his lodging I had 
reflected on the oddity of my having been as stupid 
about the husband as I had been about the wife. 
He had escaped my notice since our arrival, but I 
had, as a much older man, met him — the hero of his 
odd union — at some earlier time. Like his wife, 
none the less, he had now struck me as a stranger, 
and it was not till, in his room, I stood a little face 
to face with him that I made out the wonderful 
reason. 

The wonderful reason was that I was twt a much 
older man; Guy Brissenden, at any rate, was not a 
much younger. It was he who was old — it was he 
who was older — it was he who was oldest. That 
was so disconcertingly what he had become. It 
was in short what he would have been had he been 
as old as he looked. He looked almost anything — 
he looked quite sixty. I made it out again at din- 
ner, where, from a distance, but opposite, I had him 
in sight. Nothing could have been stranger than 

21 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the way that, fatigued, fixed, settled, he seemed to 
have piled up the years. They were there without 
having had time to arrive. It was as if he had dis- 
covered some miraculous short cut to the common 
doom. He had grown old, in fine, as people you 
see after an interval sometimes strike you as having 
grown rich — too quickly for the honest, or at least 
for the straight, way. He had cheated or inherited 
or speculated. It took me but a minute then to 
add him to my little gallery — the small collection, 
I mean, represented by his wife and by Gilbert Long, 
as well as in some degree doubtless also by Lady 
John: the museum of those who put to me with 
such intensity the question of what had happened 
to them. His wife, on the same side, was not out 
of my range, and now, largely exposed, lighted, 
jewelled, and enjoying moreover visibly the sense 
of these things — his wife, upon my honour, as I 
soon remarked to the lady next me, his wife (it was 
too prodigious !) looked about twenty. 

" Yes — isn't it funny? " said the lady next me. 

It was so funny that it set me thinking afresh and 
that, with the interest of it, which became a positive 
excitement, I had to keep myself in hand in order 
not too publicly to explain, not to break out right 
and left with my reflections. I don't know why — it 
was a sense instinctive and unreasoned, but I felt 
from the first that if I was on the scent of something 
ultimate I had better waste neither my wonder nor 

22 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

my wisdom. I zvas on the scent — that I was sure 
of; and yet even after I was sure I should still have 
been at a loss to put my enigma itself into words. 
I was just conscious, vaguely, of being on the track 
of a law, a law that would fit, that would strike me 
as governing the delicate phenomena — delicate 
though so marked — that my imagination found it- 
self playing with. A part of the amusement they 
yielded came, I daresay, from my exaggerating 
them — grouping them into a larger mystery (and 
thereby a larger " law ") than the facts, as observed, 
yet warranted; but that is the common fault of 
minds for which the vision of life is an obsession. 
The obsession pays, if one will; but to pay it has to 
borrow. After dinner, but while the men were still 
in the room, I had some talk again with Long, of 
whom I inquired if he had been so placed as to 
see " poor Briss." 

He appeared to wonder, and poor Briss, with 
our shifting of seats, was now at a distance. " I 
think so — but I didn't particularly notice. What's 
the matter with poor Briss? " 

" That's exactly what I thought you might be 
able to tell me. But if nothing, in him, strikes 
you !" 

He met my eyes a moment — then glanced about. 
"Where is he?" 

" Behind you; only don't turn round to look, for 

he knows " But I dropped, having caught 

23 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

something directed toward me in Brissenden's face. 
]\Iy interlocutor remained blank, simply asking me, 
after an instant, what it was he knew. On this I 
said what I meant. " He knows we've noticed." 

Long wondered again. " Ah, but I haven't! " 
He spoke with some sharpness. 

" He knows," I continued, noting the sharpness 
too, " what's the matter with him." 

" Then what the devil is it? " 

I waited a little, having for the moment an idea 
on my hands. *' Do you see him often? " 

Long disengaged the ash from his cigarette. 
"No. Why should I?" 

Distinctly, he was uneasy — though as yet per- 
haps but vaguely — at what I might be coming to. 
That was precisely my idea, and if I pitied him a lit- 
tle for my pressure my idea was yet what most 
possessed me. " Do you mean there's nothing in 
him that strikes you? " 

On this, unmistakably, he looked at me hard. 
" ' Strikes ' me — in that boy? Nothing in him, 
that I know of, ever struck me in my life. He's 
not an object of the smallest interest to me ! " 

I felt that if I insisted I should really stir up the 
old Long, the stolid coxcomb, capable of rudeness, 
with whose redemption, reabsorption, supersession 
— one scarcely knew what to call it — I had been so 
happily impressed. " Oh, of course, if you haven't 
noticed, you haven't, and the matter I was going to 

24 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

speak of will have no point. You won't know what 
I mean." With which I paused long enough to let 
his curiosity operate if his denial had been sincere. 
But it hadn't. His curiosity never operated. He 
only exclaimed, more indulgently, that he didn't 
know what I was talking about; and I recognised 
after a little that if I had made him, without inten- 
tion, uncomfortable, this was exactly a proof of his 
being what Mrs. Briss, at the station, had called 
cleverer, and what I had so much remarked while, 
in the garden before dinner, he held our small com- 
pany. Nobody, nothing could, in the time of his 
inanity, have made him turn a hair. It was the 
mark of his aggrandisement. But I spared him — 
so far as was consistent with my wish for absolute 
certainty; changed the subject, spoke of other 
things, took pains to sound disconnectedly, and 
only after reference to several of the other ladies, 
the name over which we had just felt friction. 
" Mrs. Brissenden's quite fabulous." 

He appeared to have strayed, in our interval, far. 
"'Fabulous'?" 

" Why, for the figure that, by candle-light and in 
cloth-of-silver and diamonds, she is still able to 
make." 

" Oh dear, yes ! " He showed as reheved to be 
able to see what I meant. " She has grown so very 
much less plain." 

But that wasn't at all what I meant. " Ah," I 
25 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

said, '' yoii put it the other way at Paddington — 
which was much more the right one." 

He had quite forgotten. '' How then did I put 
it?" 

As he had done before, I got rid of my ash. 
" She hasn't grown very much less plain. She has 
only grown very much less old." 

" Ah, well," he laughed, but as if his interest had 
quickly dropped, " youth is — comparatively speak- 
ing — beauty." 

" Oh, not always. Look at poor Briss himself." 

" Well, if you like better, beauty is youth." 

" Not always, either," I returned. " Certainly 
only when it is beauty. To see how little it may be 
either, look," I repeated, " at poor Briss." 

" I thought you told me just now not to ! " He 
rose at last in his impatience. 

" Well, at present you can." 

I also got up, the other men at the same moment 
moved, and the subject of our reference stood in 
view. This indeed was but briefly, for, as if to ex- 
amine a picture behind him, the personage in 
question suddenly turned his back. Long, how- 
ever, had had time to take him in and then to decide. 
"I've looked. What then?" 

" You don't see anything? " 

" Nothing." 

" Not what everyone else must? " 

" No, confound you ! " 
26 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I already felt that, to be so tortuous, he must 
have had a reason, and the search for his reason 
was what, from this moment, drew me on. I had 
in fact half guessed it as we stood there. But 
this only made me the more explanatory. " It 
isn't really, however, that Brissenden has grown 
less lovely — it's only that he has grown less 
young." 

To which my friend, as we quitted the room, re- 
plied simply: "Oh!" 

The effect I have mentioned was, none the less, 
too absurd. The poor youth's back, before us, still 
as if consciously presented, confessed to the burden 
of time. " How old," I continued, " did we make 
out this afternoon that he would be? " 

" That who would? " 

'' Why, poor Briss." 

He fairly pulled up in our march. " Have you 
got him on the brain? " 

" Don't I seem to remember, my dear man, that 
it was you yourself who knew? He's thirty at the 
most. He can't possibly be more. And there he 
is : as fine, as swaddled, as royal a mummy, to the 
eye, as one would wish to see. Don't pretend! 
But it's all right." I laughed as I took myself up. 
" I must talk to Lady John." 

I did talk to her, but I must come to it. What 
is most to the point just here is an observation or 
two that, in the smoking-room, before going to 

27 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

bed, I exchanged with Ford Obert. I forbore, as 
I have hinted, to show all I saw, but it was lawfully 
open to me to judge of what other people did; and 
I had had before dinner my little proof that, on oc- 
casion, Obert could see as much as most. Yet I 
said nothing- more to him for the present about Mrs. 
Server. The Brissendens were new to him, and his 
experience of every sort of facial accident, of human 
sign, made him just the touchstone I wanted. 
Nothing, naturally, was easier than to turn him on 
the question of the fair and the foul, type and char- 
acter, weal and woe, among our fellow-visitors; so 
that my mention of the air of disparity in the couple 
I have just named came in its order and produced 
its efifect. This effect was that of my seeing — 
which was all I required — that if the disparity was 
marked for him this expert observer could yet read 
it quite the wrong way. Why had so fine a young 
creature married a man three times her age? He 
was of course astounded when I told him the young 
creature was much nearer three times Brissenden's, 
and this led to some interesting talk between us as 
to the consequences, in general, of such association 
on such terms. The particular case before us, I 
easily granted, sinned by over-emphasis, but it was 
a fair, though a gross, illustration of what almost 
always occurred when twenty and forty, when 
thirty and sixty, mated or mingled, lived together 
in intimacy. Intimacy of course had to be postu- 

28 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

lated. Then either the high number or the low 
ahvays got the upper hand, and it was usually 
the high that succeeded. It seemed, in other 
words, more possible to go back than to keep still, 
to grow young than to remain so. If Brissenden 
had been of his wife's age and his wife of Brissen- 
den's, it would thus be he who must have rede- 
scended the hill, it would be she who would have 
been pushed over the brow. There was really a 
touching truth in it, the stuff of — what did people 
call such things? — an apologue or a parable. " One 
of the pair," I said, " has to pay for the other. 
What ensues is a miracle, and miracles are expen- 
sive. What's a greater one than to have your 
youth twice over? It's a second wind, another 
' go ' — which isn't the sort of thing life mostly 
treats us to. Mrs. Briss had to get her new blood, 
her extra allowance of time and bloom, some- 
where; and from whom could she so conveniently 
extract them as from Guy himself? She has, by an 
extraordinary feat of legerdemain, extracted them; 
and he, on his side, to supply her, has had to tap 
the sacred fount. But the sacred fount is like the 
greedy man's description of the turkey as an 
' awkward ' dinner dish. It may be sometimes too 
much for a single share, but it's not enough to go 
round." 

Obert was at all events sufficiently struck with 
my view to throw out a question on it. " So that, 

29 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

paying to his last drop, Mr. Briss, as you call him, 
can only die of the business? " 

" Oh, not yet, I hope. But before her — yes : 
long." 

He was much amused. " How you polish them 
off!" 

" I only talk," I returned, " as you paint; not a 
bit worse ! But one must indeed wonder," I con- 
ceded, " how the poor wretches feel." 

" You mean whether Brissenden hkes it? " 

I made up my mind on the spot. " If he loves 
her he must. That is if he loves her passionately, 
subhmely." I saw it all. " It's in fact just because 
he does so love her that the miracle, for her, is 
wrought." 

" Well," my friend reflected, " for taking a mira- 
cle coolly ! " 

" She hasn't her equal? Yes, she does take 
it. She just quietly, but just selfishly, profits by 
it." 

" And doesn't see then how her victim loses? " 

" No. She can't. The perception, if she had it, 
would be painful and terrible — might even be fatal 
to the process. So she hasn't it. She passes round 
it. It takes all her flood of life to meet her own 
chance. She has only a wonderful sense of success 
and well-being. The other consciousness " 

" Is all for the other party? " 

" The author of the sacrifice." 

30 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Then how beautifully ' poor Briss,' " my com- 
panion said, " must have it ! " 

I had already assured myself. He had gone to 
bed, and my fancy followed him. " Oh, he has it 
so that, though he goes, in his passion, about with 
her, he dares scarcely show his face." And I made 
a final induction. " The agents of the sacrifice are 
uncomfortable, I gather, when they suspect or fear 
that you see." 

My friend was charmed with my ingenuity. 
" How you've worked it out ! " 

" Well, I feel as if I were on the way to some- 
thing." 

He looked surprised. " Something still more? " 

" Something still more." I had an impulse to 
tell him I scarce knew what. But I kept it under. 
" I seem to snuff up " 

" Quoi done? " 

" The sense of a discovery to be made." 

"And of what?" 

" I'll tell you to-morrow. Good-night." 



31 



Ill 



I DID on the morrow several things, but the first 
was not to redeem that vow. It was to ad- 
dress myself straight to Grace Brissenden. " I 
must let you know that, in spite of your guarantee, 
it doesn't go at all — oh, but not at all ! I've tried 
Lady John, as you enjoined, and I can't but feel 
that she leaves us very much where we were." 
Then, as my listener seemed not quite to remember 
where we had been, I came to her help. " You 
said yesterday at Paddington, to explain the change 
in Gilbert Long — don't you recall? — that that 
woman, plying him with her genius and giving him 
of her best, is clever enough for two. She's not 
clever enough then, it strikes me, for three — or at 
any rate for four. I confess I don't see it. Does 
she really dazzle youf " 

My friend had caught up. " Oh, you've a stand- 
ard of wit ! " 

" No, I've only a sense of reality — a sense not at 
all satisfied by the theory of such an influence as 
Lady John's." 

She wondered. " Such a one as whose else 
then?" 

"Ah, that's for us still to find out! Of course 
32 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

this can't be easy; for as the appearance is inevita- 
bly a kind of betrayal, it's in somebody's interest to 
conceal it." 

This Mrs. Brissenden grasped. " Oh, you mean 
in the lady's?" 

" In the lady's most. But also in Long's own, 
if he's really tender of the lady — which is precisely 
what our theory posits." 

My companion, once roused, was all there. " I 
see. You call the appearance a kind of betrayal 
because it points to the relation behind it." 

" Precisely." 

" And the relation — to do that sort of thing — 
must be necessarily so awfully intimate." 

" Intimissima." 

" And kept therefore in the background exactly 
in that proportion." 

" Exactly in that proportion." 

" Very well then," said Mrs. Brissenden, "doesn't 
Mr. Long's tenderness of Lady John quite fall in 
with what I mentioned to you? " 

I remembered what she had mentioned to me. 
" His making her come down with poor Briss? " 

" Nothing less." 

*' And is that all you go upon? " 

" That and lots more." 

I thought a minute — but I had been abundantly 
thinking. " I know what you mean by ' lots.' Is 
Brissenden in it? " 

33 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Dear no — poor Briss ! He wouldn't like that. 
/ saw the manoeuvre, but Guy didn't. And you 
must have noticed how he stuck to her all last even- 
ing." 

" How Gilbert Long stuck to Lady John? Oh 
yes, I noticed. They were like Lord Lutley and 
Mrs. Froome. But is that what one can call being 
tender of her? " 

My companion weighed it. " He must speak to 
her sometimes. I'm glad you admit, at any rate," 
she continued, " that it does take what you so pret- 
tily call some woman's secretly giving him of her 
best to account for him." 

" Oh, that I admit with all my heart — or at least 
with all my head. Only, Lady John has none of 
the signs " 



" Of being the beneficent woman? What then 
are they — the signs — to be so plain?" I was not 
yet quite ready to say, however; on which she 
added : " It proves nothing, you know, that you 
don't like her." 

" No. It would prove more if she didn't like 
me, which — fatuous fool as you may find me — I 
verily believe she does. If she hated me it would 
be, you see, for my ruthless analysis of her secret. 
She has no secret. She would like awfully to have 
— and she would like almost as much to be believed 
to have. Last evening, after dinner, she could feel 
perhaps for a while that she ivas believed. But it 

34 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

won't do. There's nothing in it. You asked me 
just now," I pursued, " what the signs of such a 
secret would naturally be. Well, bethink yourself 
a moment of what the secret itself must naturally 
be." 

Oh, she looked as if she knew all about that! 
" Awfully charming — mustn't it? — to act upon a 
person, through an affection, so deeply." 

" Yes — it can certainly be no vulgar flirtation." 
I felt a little hke a teacher encouraging an apt pupil; 
but I could only go on with the lesson. " Whoever 
she is, she gives all she has. She keeps nothing 
back — nothing for herself." 

" I see — because Jic takes everything. He just 
cleans her out." She looked at me — pleased at last 
really to understand — with the best conscience in 
the world. " Who is the lady then? " 

But I could answer as yet only by a question. 
" How can she possibly be a woman who gives ab- 
solutely nothing whatever; who scrapes and saves 
and hoards; who keeps every crumb for herself? 
The whole show's there — to minister to Lady 
John's vanity and advertise the business — behind 
her smart shop-window. You can see it, as much 
as you hke, and even amuse yourself with pricing 
it. But she never parts with an article. If poor 
Long depended on her " 

*' Well, what? " She was really interested. 

" Why, he'd be the same poor Long as ever. He 

35 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

would go as he used to go — naked and unashamed. 
No," I wound up, " he deals — turned out as we now 
see him — at another establishment," 

" I'll grant it," said Mrs. Brissenden, " if you'll 
only name me the place." 

Ah, I could still but laugh and resume 1 " He 
doesn't screen Lady John — she doesn't screen her- 
self — with your husband or with anybody. It's she 
who's herself the screen ! And pleased as she is 
at being so clever, and at being thought so, she 
doesn't even know it. She doesn't so much as sus- 
pect it. She's an unmitigated fool about it. ' Of 
course Mr. Long's clever, because he's in love with 
me and sits at my feet, and don't you see how clever 
/ am? Don't you hear what good things I say — 
wait a little, I'm going to say another in about three 
minutes; and how, if you'll only give him time too, 
he comes out with them after me? They don't per- 
haps sound so good, but you see where he has got 
them. I'm so brilliant, in fine, that the men who 
admire me have only to imitate me, which, you ob- 
serve, they strikingly do.' Something like that is 
all her philosophy." 

My friend turned it over. " You do sound 
like her, you know. Yet how, if a woman's 
stupid " 

" Can she have made a man clever? She can't. 
She can't at least have begun it. What we shall 
know the real person by, in the case that you and 

36 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I are studying, is that the man himself will have 
made her what she has become. She will have 
done just what Lady John has not done — she will 
have put up the shutters and closed the shop. She 
will have parted, for her friend, with her wit." 

" So that she may be regarded as reduced to 
idiocy? " 

" Well — so I can only see it." 

"And that if we look, therefore, for the right 
idiot " 

" We shall find the right woman — our friend's 
mystic Egeria? Yes, we shall be at least approach- 
ing the truth. We shall ' burn,' as they say in 
hide-and-seek." I of course kept to the point that 
the idiot would have to be the right one. Any idiot 
wouldn't be to the purpose. If it was enough that 
a woman was a fool the search might become hope- 
less even in a house that would have passed but ill for 
a fool's paradise. We were on one of the shaded ter- 
races, to which, here and there, a tall window stood 
open. The picture without was all morning and 
August, and within all clear dimness and rich 
gleams. We stopped once or twice, raking the 
gloom for lights, and it was at some such moment 
that Mrs. Brissenden asked me if 1 then regarded 
Gilbert Long as now exalted to the position of the 
most brilliant of our companions. " The cleverest 
man of the party? " — it pulled me up a little. 
" Hardly that, perhaps — for don't you see the 

37 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

proofs I'm myself giving you? But say he is'' — 
I considered — " the cleverest but one." The next 
moment I had seen what she meant. " In that case 
the thing we're looking for ought logically to be 
the person, of the opposite sex, giving us the maxi- 
mum sense of depletion for his benefit? The big- 
gest fool, you suggest, must, consistently, be the 
right one? Yes again; it would so seem. But 
that's not really, you see, the short cut it sounds. 
The biggest fool is what we want, but the question 
is to discover who is the biggest." 

" I'm glad then / feel so safe ! " Mrs. Brissen- 
den laughed. 

" Oh, you're not the biggest ! " I handsomely 
conceded. " Besides, as I say, there must be the 
other evidence — the evidence of relations." 

We had gone on, with this, a few steps, but my 
companion again checked me, while her nod toward 
a window gave my attention a lead. " Won't that, 
as it happens, then do? " We could just see, from 
where we stood, a corner of one of the rooms. It 
was occupied by a seated couple, a lady whose face 
was in sight and a gentleman whose identity was 
attested by his back, a back somehow replete for 
us, at the moment, with a guilty significance. 
There zvas the evidence of relations. That we had 
suddenly caught Long in the act of presenting his 
receptacle at the sacred fount seemed announced 
by the tone in which Mrs. Brissenden named the 

38 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

other party — " Mme. de Dreuil ! " We looked at 
each other, I was aware, with some elation ; but our 
triumph was brief. The Comtesse de Dreuil, we 
quickly felt — an American married to a Frenchman 
— wasn't at all the thing. She was almost as much 
" all there " as Lady John, She was only another 
screen, and we perceived, for that matter, the next 
minute, that Lady John was also present. Another 
step had placed us within range of her; the picture 
revealed in the rich dusk of the room was a group 
of three. From that moment, unanimously, we 
gave up Lady John, and as we continued our stroll 
my friend brought out her despair. " Then he has 
nothing but screens? The need for so many does 
suggest a fire! " And in spite of discouragement 
she sounded, interrogatively, one after the other, 
the names of those ladies the perfection of whose 
presence of mind might, when considered, pass as 
questionable. We soon, however, felt our process 
to be, practically, a trifle invidious. Not one of the 
persons named could, at any rate — to do them all 
justice — afTect us as an intellectual ruin. It was 
natural therefore for Mrs. Brissenden to conclude 
with scepticism. " She may exist — and exist as 
you require her; but what, after all, proves that 
she's here? She mayn't have come down with him. 
Does it necessarily follow that they always go about 
together? " 

I was ready to declare that it necessarily followed. 
39 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I had my idea, and I didn't see why I shouldn't 
bring it out. " It's my beHef that he no more goes 
away without her than you go away without poor 
Briss." 

She surveyed me in splendid serenity. " But 
what have we in common? " 

" With the parties to an abandoned flirtation? 
Well, you've in common your mutual attachment 
and the fact that you're thoroughly happy together." 

" Ah," she good-humouredly answered, " we 
don't flirt ! " 

" Well, at all events, you don't separate. He 
doesn't really suffer you out of his sight, and, to 
circulate in the society you adorn, you don't leave 
him at home." 

" Why shouldn't I? " she asked, looking at me, 
I thought, just a trifle harder. 

" It isn't a question of why you shouldn't — it's a 
question of whether you do. You don't — do you? 
That's all." 

She thought it over as if for the first time. " It 
seems to me I often leave him w'hen I don't want 
him." 

" Oh, when you don't want him — yes. But 
when don't you want him? You want him when 
you want to be right, and you want to be right when 
you mix in a scene like this. I mean," I continued 
for my private amusement, " when you want to be 
happy. Happiness, you know, is, to a lady in the full 

40 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

tide of social success, even more becoming than a 
new French frock. You have the advantage, for 
your beauty, of being admirably married. You 
bloom in your husband's presence. I don't say he 
need always be at your elbow; I simply say that 
you're most completely yourself when he's not far 
off. If there were nothing else there would be the 
help given you by your quiet confidence in his law- 
ful passion." 

" I'm bound to say," Mrs. Brissenden replied, 
" that such help is consistent with his not having 
spoken to me since we parted, yesterday, to come 
down here by different trains. We haven't so much 
as met since our arrival. My finding him so in- 
dispensable is consistent with my not having so 
much as looked at him. Indispensable, please, for 
what?" 

" For your not being without him." 

" What then do I do with him? " 

I hesitated — there were so many ways of putting 
it; but I gave them all up. " Ah, I think it will be 
only Jie who can tell you ! My point is that you've 
the instinct — playing in you, on either side, with all 
the ease of experience — of what you are to each 
other. All I mean is that it's the instinct that Long 
and his good friend must have. They too perhaps 
haven't spoken to each other. But where he 
comes she does, and where she comes he does. 
That's why I know she's among us." 

41 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" It's wonderful what you know ! " Mrs. Bris- 
senclen again laughed. " How can you think of 
them as enjoying the facilities of people in our sit- 
uation? " 

" Of people married and therefore logically in 
presence? I don't," I was able to reply, " speak of 
their facilities as the same, and I recognise every 
limit to their freedom. But I maintain, none the 
less, that so far as they can go, they do go. It's a 
relation, and they work the relation: the relation, 
exquisite surely, of knowing they help each other 
to shine. Why are they not, therefore, like you 
and Brissenden? What I make out is that when 
they do shine one w'ill find — though only after a 
hunt, I admit, as you see — they must both have 
been involved. Feeling their need, and consum- 
mately expert, they will have managed, have ar- 
ranged." 

She took it in with her present odd mixture of 
the receptive and the derisive. " Arranged what? " 

" Oh, ask her! " 

" I would if I could find her ! " After which, for 
a moment, my interlocutress again considered. 
" But I thought it was just your contention that 
she doesn't shine. If it's Lady John's perfect repair 
that puts that sort of thing out of the question, your 
image, it seems to me, breaks down." 

It did a little, I saw, but I gave it a tilt up. " Not 
at all. It's a case of shining as Brissenden shines." 

42 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I wondered if I might go further — then risked it. 
" By sacrifice." 

I perceived at once that I needn't fear : her con- 
science was too good — she was only amused. 
" Sacrifice, for mercy's sake, of what? " 

" Well — for mercy's sake — of his time." 

" His time? " She stared. " Hasn't he all the 
time he wants? " 

" My dear lady," I smiled, " he hasn't all the time 
you want ! " 

But she evidently had not a glimmering of what 
I meant. " Don't I make things of an ease, don't 
I make life of a charm, for him? " 

I'm afraid I laughed out. " That's perhaps ex- 
actly it! It's what Gilbert Long does for his vic- 
tim — makes things, makes life, of an ease and a 
charm." 

She stopped yet again, really wondering at me 
now. " Then it's the woman, simply, who's hap- 
piest?" 

" Because Brissenden's the man who is? Pre- 
cisely ! " 

On which for a minute, without her going on, 
we looked at each other, " Do you really mean 
that if you only knew mc as I am, it would come to 
you in the same way to hunt for my confederate? 
I mean if he weren't made obvious, you know, by 
his being my husband." 

I turned this over. " If you were only in flirta- 

43 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

tion — as you reminded me just now that you're 
not? Surely!" I declared. "I should arrive at 
him, perfectly, after all eliminations, on the princi- 
ple of looking for the greatest happiness " 

" Of the smallest number? Well, he may be a 
small number," she indulgently sighed, " but he's 
wholly content! Look at him now there," she 
added the next moment, " and judge." We had 
resumed our walk and turned the corner of the 
house, a movement that brought us into view of a 
couple just round the angle of the terrace, a couple 
who, like ourselves, must have paused in a sociable 
stroll. The lady, with her back to us, leaned a lit- 
tle on the balustrade and looked at the gardens; 
the gentleman close to her, with the same support, 
ofifered us the face of Guy Brissenden, as recognis- 
able at a distance as the numbered card of a " turn " 
— the black figure upon white — at a music-hall. 
On seeing us he said a word to his companion, who 
quickly jerked round. Then his wife exclaimed to 
me — only with more sharpness — as she had ex- 
claimed at Mme. de Dreuil : " By all that's lovely — 
May Server!" I took it, on the spot, for a kind 
of " Eureka ! " but without catching my friend's 
idea. I was only aware at first that this idea left 
me as unconvinced as when the other possibilities 
had passed before us. Wasn't it simply the result 
of this lady's being the only one we had happened 
not to eliminate? She had not even occurred to 

44 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

us. She was pretty enough perhaps for any magic, 
but she hadn't the other signs. I didn't believe, 
somehow — certainly not on such short notice — 
either in her happiness or in her flatness. There 
was a vague suggestion, of a sort, in our having 
found her there with Brissenden : there would have 
been a pertinence, to our curiosity, or at least to 
mine, in this juxtaposition of the two persons who 
paid, as I had amused myself with calling it, so 
heroically; yet I had only to have it marked for me 
(to see them, that is, side by side,) in order to feel 
how little — at any rate superficially — the graceful, 
natural, charming woman ranged herself with the 
superannuated youth. 

She had said a word to him at sight of us, in an- 
swer to his own, and in a minute or two they had met 
us. This had given me time for more than one 
reflection. It had also given Mrs. Brissenden time 
to insist to me on her identification, which I could 
see she would be much less quick to drop than in 
the former cases. " We have her," she murmured; 
" we have her; it's she! " It was by her insistance 
in fact that my thought was quickened. It even 
felt a kind of chill — an odd revulsion — at the touch 
of her eagerness. Singular perhaps that only then 
— yet quite certainly then — the curiosity to which 
I had so freely surrendered myself began to strike 
me as wanting in taste. It was reflected in Mrs. 
Brissenden quite by my fault, and I can't say just 

45 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

what cause for shame, after so much talk of our 
search and our scent, I found in our awakened and 
confirmed keenness. Why in the world hadn't I 
found it before? My scruple, in short, was a thing 
of the instant; it was in a positive flash that the 
amusing question w-as stamped for me as none of 
my business. One of the reflections I have just 
mentioned was that I had not had a happy hand in 
making it so completely Mrs. Brissenden's. An- 
other was, however, that nothing, fortunately, that 
had happened between us really signified. For 
what had so suddenly overtaken me was the con- 
sciousness of this anomaly : that I was at the same 
time as disgusted as if I had exposed Mrs. Server 
and absolutely convinced that I had yet not exposed 
her. 

While, after the others had greeted us and we 
stood in vague talk, I caught afresh the efl^ect of 
their juxtaposition, I grasped, with a private joy 
that was quite extravagant — as so beyond the need- 
ed mark — at the reassurance it offered. This reas- 
surance sprang straight from a special source. 
Brissenden's secret was so aware of itself as to be 
always on the defensive. Shy and suspicious, it 
was as much on the defensive at present as I had 
felt it to be — so far as I was concerned — the night 
before. What was there accordingly in Mrs. Ser- 
ver — frank and fragrant in the morning air — to 
correspond to any such consciousness? Nothing 

46 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

whatever — not a symptom. Whatever secrets she 
might have had, she had not that one; she was not 
in the same box; the sacred fount, in her, was not 
threatened with exhaustion. We all soon re- 
entered the house together, but Mrs. Brissenden, 
during the few minutes that followed, managed to 
possess herself of the subject of her denunciation. 
She put me ofif with Guy, and I couldn't help feeling 
it as a sign of her concentration. She warmed to 
the question just as I had thrown it over; and I 
asked myself rather ruefully what on earth I had 
been thinking of. I hadn't in the least had it in 
mind to "compromise" an individual; but an in- 
dividual would be compromised if I didn't now take 
care. 



47 



IV 

I HAVE said that I did many things on this 
wonderful day, but perhaps the simplest way 
to describe the rest of them is as a sustained attempt 
to avert that disaster. I succeeded, by vigilance, in 
preventing my late companion from carrying Mrs. 
Server of¥: I had no wish to see her studied — by 
anyone but myself at least — in the light of my 
theory. I felt by this time that I understood my 
theory, but I was not obliged to believe that Mrs. 
Brissenden did. I am afraid I must frankly con- 
fess that I called deception to my aid; to separate 
the two ladies I gave the more initiated a look in 
which I invited her to read volumes. This look, 
or rather the look she returned, comes back to me 
as the first note of a tolerably tight, tense little 
drama, a little drama of which our remaining hours 
at Newmarch were the all too ample stage. She 
understood me, as I meant, that she had better leave 
me to get at the truth — owing me some obligation, 
as she did, for so much of it as I had already com- 
municated. This step was of course a tacit pledge 
that she should have the rest from me later on. I 
knew of some pictures in one of the rooms that had 

48 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

not been lighted the previous evening, and I made 
these my pretext for the effect I desired. I asked 
Mrs. Server if she wouldn't come and see them 
with me, admitting at the same time that I could 
scarce expect her to forgive me for my share in the 
invasion of the quiet corner in which poor Briss 
had evidently managed so to interest her. 

" Oh, yes," she replied as we went our way, " he 
had managed to interest me. Isn't he curiously 
interesting? But I hadn't," she continued on my 
being too struck with her question for an immediate 
answer — " I hadn't managed to interest him. Of 
course you know why ! " she laughed. " No one 
interests him but Lady John, and he could think 
of nothing, while I kept him there, but of how soon 
he could return to her." 

These remarks — of which I give rather the sense 
than the form, for they were a little scattered and 
troubled, and I helped them out and pieced them 
together — these remarks had for me, I was to find, 
unexpected suggestions, not all of which was I pre- 
pared on the spot to take up. " And is Lady John 
interested in our friend? " 

" Not, I suppose, given her situation, so much 
as he would perhaps desire. You don't know what 
her situation is? " she went on while I doubtless ap- 
peared to be sunk in innocence. " Isn't it rather 
marked that there's only one person she's interested 
in?" 

49 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"One person?" I was thoroughly at sea. 

But we had reached with it the great pictured 
saloon with which I had proposed to assist her to 
renew acquaintance and in which two visitors had 
anticipated us. " Why, here he is ! " she exclaimed 
as we paused, for admiration, in the doorway. The 
high frescoed ceiling arched over a floor so highly 
polished that it seemed to reflect the faded pastels 
set, in rococo borders, in the walls and constituting 
the distinction of the place. Our companions, ex- 
amining together one of the portraits and turning 
their backs, were at the opposite end, and one of 
them was Gilbert Long. 

I immediately named the other. " Do you mean 
Ford Obert?" 

She gave me, with a laugh, one of her beautiful 
looks. "Yes!" 

It was answer enough for the moment, and the 
manner of it showed me to what legend she was 
committed. I asked myself, while the two men 
faced about to meet us, why she was committed to 
it, and I further considered that if Grace Brissenden, 
against every appearance, was right, there would 
now be something for me to see. Which of the 
two — the agent or the object of the sacrifice — 
would take most precautions? I kept my compan- 
ion purposely, for a little while, on our side of the 
room, leaving the others, interested in their obser- 
vations, to take their time to join us. It gave me 

50 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

occasion to wonder if the question mightn't be 
cleared up on the spot. There was no question, I 
had compunctiously made up my mind, for Mrs. , 
Server; but now I should see the proof of that con- 
clusion. The proof of it would be, between her and 
her imputed lover, the absence of anything that 
was not perfectly natural. Mrs. Server, with her 
eyes raised to the painted dome, with response 
charmed almost to solemnity in her exquisite face, 
struck me at this moment, I had to concede, as more 
than ever a person to have a lover imputed. The 
place, save for its pictures of later date, a triumph 
of the florid decoration of two centuries ago, evi- 
dently met her special taste, and a kind of profane 
piety had dropped on her, drizzling down, in the cold 
light, in silver, in crystal, in faint, mixed delicacies 
of colour, almost as on a pilgrim at a shrine. I don't 
know what it was in her — save, that is, the positive 
pitch of delicacy in her beauty — that made her, so 
impressed and presented, indescribably touching. 
She was like an awestruck child; she might have 
been herself — all Greuze tints, all pale pinks and 
blues and pearly whites and candid eyes — an old 
dead pastel under glass. 

She was not too reduced to this state, however, 
not to take, soon enough, her own precaution — if a 
precaution it was to be deemed. I was acutely 
conscious that the naturalness to which I have just 
alluded would be, for either party, the only precau- 

51 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

tion worth speaking of. We moved slowly round 
the room, pausing here and there for curiosity; dur- 
ing which time the two men remained where we 
had found them. She had begun at last to watch 
them and had proposed that we should see in what 
they were so absorbed; but I checked her in the 
movement, raising my hand in a friendly admoni- 
tion to wait. We waited then, face to face, looking 
at each other as if to catch a strain of music. This 
was what I had intended, for it had just come to me 
that one of the voices was in the air and that it had 
imposed close attention. The distinguished painter 
listened while — to all appearance — Gilbert Long 
did, in the presence of the picture, the explaining. 
Ford Obert moved, after a little, but not so as to in- 
terrupt — only so as to show me his face in a recall 
of what had passed between us the night before in 
the smoking-room. I turned my eyes from Mrs. 
Server's; I allowed myself to commune a little, 
across the shining space, with those of our fellow- 
auditor. The occasion had thus for a minute the 
oddest little air of an aesthetic lecture prompted by 
accidental, but immense, suggestions and delivered 
by Gilbert Long. 

I couldn't, at the distance, with my companion, 
quite follow it, but Obert was clearly patient 
enough to betray that he was struck. His impres- 
sion was at any rate doubtless his share of surprise 
at Long's gift of talk. This was what his eyes in- 

52 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

deed most seemed to throw over to me — " What an 
unexpected demon of a critic ! " It was extraordi- 
narily interesting — I don't mean the special drift of 
Long's eloquence, which I couldn't, as I say, catch; 
but the phenomenon of his, of all people, dealing in 
that article. It put before me the question of 
whether, in these strange relations that I believed I 
had thus got my glimpse of, the action of the per- 
son " sacrificed " mightn't be quite out of propor- 
tion to the resources of that person. It was as if 
these elements might really multiply in the transfer 
made of them; as if the borrower practically found 
himself — or herself — in possession of a greater sum 
than the known property of the creditor. The sur- 
render, in this way, added, by pure beauty, to the 
thing surrendered. We all know the French adage 
about that plus belle fille du monde who can give but 
what she has; yet if Mrs. Server, for instance, had 
been the heroine of this particular connection, the 
communication of her intelligence to her friend 
would quite have falsified it. She would have given 
much more than she had. 

When Long had finished his demonstration and 
his charged voice had dropped, we crossed to claim 
acquaintance with the work that had inspired him. 
The place had not been completely new to Mrs. 
Server any more than to myself, and the impression 
now made on her was but the intenser vibration of 
a chord already stirred; nevertheless I was struck 

53 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

with her saying, as a result of more remembrance 
than I had attributed to her " Oh yes, — the man 
with the mask in his hand ! " On our joining the 
others I expressed regret at our having turned up 
too late for the ideas that, on a theme so promis- 
ing, they would have been sure to produce, and 
Obert, quite agreeing that we had lost a treat, said 
frankly, in reference to Long, but addressing him- 
self more especially to Mrs. Server: "He's per- 
fectly amazing, you know — he's perfectly amaz- 
ing!" 

I observed that as a consequence of this Long 
looked neither at Mrs. Server nor at Obert; he 
looked only at me, and with quite a penetrable shade 
of shyness. Then again a strange thing happened, a 
stranger thing even than my quick sense, the pre- 
vious afternoon at the station, that he was a 
changed man. It was as if he were still more 
changed — had altered as much since the evening 
before as during the so much longer interval of 
which I had originally to take account. He had 
altered almost like Grace Brissenden — he looked 
fairly distinguished. I said to myself that, without 
his stature and certain signs in his dress, I should 
probably not have placed him. Engrossed an in- 
stant with this view and with not losing touch of the 
uneasiness that I conceived I had fastened on him, 
I became aware only after she had spoken that Mrs. 
Server had gaily and gracefully asked of Obert why 

54 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

in the world so clever a man should not have been 
clever. " Obert," I accordingly took upon myself 
to remark, " had evidently laboured under some 
extraordinary delusion. He must literally have 
doubted if Long was clever." 

" Fancy ! " Mrs. Server explained with a charm- 
ing smile at Long, who, still looking pleasantly 
competent and not too fatuous, amiably returned it. 

" They're natural, they're natural," I privately 
reflected; " that is, he's natural to Jicr, but he's not 
so to me." And as if seeing depths in this, and to 
try it, I appealed to him. " Do, my dear man, let 
us have it again. It's the picture, of all pictures, 
that most needs an interpreter. Don't we want," I 
asked of Mrs. Server, " to know what it means? " 
The figure represented is a young man in black — 
a quaint, tight black dress, fashioned in years long 
past; with a pale, lean, livid face and a stare, from 
eyes without eyebrows, like that of some whitened 
old-world clown. In his hand he holds an object 
that strikes the spectator at first simply as some 
obscure, some ambiguous work of art, but that on a 
second view becomes a representation of a human 
face, modelled and coloured, in wax, in enamelled 
metal, in some substance not human. The object 
thus appears a complete mask, such as might have 
been fantastically fitted and worn, 

"Yes, what in the world does it mean?" Mrs. 
Server replied. " One could call it — though that 

55 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

doesn't get one much further — the Mask of 
Death." 

"Why so?" I demanded while we all again 
looked at the picture. " Isn't it much rather the 
Mask of Life? It's the man's own face that's 
Death. The other one, blooming and beauti- 
ful " 

" Ah, but with an awful grimace ! " Mrs. Server 
broke in. 

" The other one, blooming and beautiful," I re- 
peated, " is Life, and he's going to put it on; unless 
indeed he has just taken it ofT." 

" He's dreadful, he's awful — that's what I mean," 
said Mrs. Server. " But what does Mr. Long 
think?" 

" The artificial face, on the other hand," I went 
on, as Long now said nothing, " is extremely 
studied and, when you carefully look at it, charm- 
ingly pretty. I don't see the grimace." 

" I don't see anything else! " Mrs. Server good- 
humouredly insisted. " And what does Mr. Obert 
think? " 

He kept his eyes on her a moment before re- 
plying. " He thinks it looks like a lovely lady." 

" That grinning mask? What lovely lady? " 

" It does," I declared to him, really seeing what 
he meant — " it does look remarkably like Mrs. 
Server." 

She laughed, but forgivingly. " I'm immensely 

56 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

obliged. You deserve," she continued to me, " that 
I should say the gentleman's own face is the image 
of a certain other gentleman's." 

" It isn't the image of yours," Obert said to me, 
fitting the cap, " but it's a funny thing that it 
should really recall to one some face among us here, 
on this occasion — I mean some face in our party — 
that I can't think of." We had our eyes again on 
the ominous figure. " We've seen him yesterday — 
we've seen him already this morning." Obert, 
oddly enough, still couldn't catch it. " Who the 
deuce is it? " 

" I know," I returned after a moment — our 
friend's reference having again, in a flash, become 
illuminating. " But nothing would induce me to 
tell." 

" If / were the flattered individual," Long ob- 
served, speaking for the first time, " I've an idea 
that you'd give me the benefit of the compliment. 
Therefore it's probably not me." 

" Oh, it's not you in the least," Mrs. Server 
blandly took upon herself to observe. " This face 
is so bad " 

" And mine is so good?" our companion laughed. 
" Thank you for saving me ! " 

I watched them look at each other, for there had 
been as yet between them no complete exchange. 
Yes, they were natural. I couldn't have made it 
out that they were not. But there was something, 

57 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

all the same, that I wanted to know, and I put it 
immediately to Long. " Why do you bring against 
me such an accusation? " 

He met the question — singularly enough — as if 
his readiness had suddenly deserted him. " I don't 
know ! " — and he turned off to another picture. 

It left the three of us all the more confronted 
with the conundrum launched by Obert, and Mrs. 
Server's curiosity remained. " Do name," she said 
to me, " the flattered individual." 

" No, it's a responsibility I leave to Obert." 

But he was clearly still at fault; he was like a 
man desiring, but unable, to sneeze. " I see the 
fellow — yet I don't. Never mind." He turned 
away too. " He'll come to me." 

" The resemblance," said Long, on this, at a dis- 
tance from us and not turning, " the resemblance, 
which I shouldn't think would puzzle anyone, is 
simply to ' poor Briss ' ! " 

" Oh, of course ! " — and Obert gave a jump 
round. 

" Ah — I do see it," Mrs. Server conceded with 
her head on one side, but as if speaking rather for 
harmony. 

I didn't believe she saw it, but that only made her 
the more natural; which was also the air she had on 
going to join Long, in his new contemplation, 
after I had admitted that it was of Brissenden I my- 
self had thought. Obert and I remained together 

58 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

in the presence of the Man with the Mask, and, the 
others being out of earshot, he reminded me that 
I had promised him the night before in the smok- 
ing-room to give him to-day the knowledge I had 
then withheld. If I had announced that I was on 
the track of a discovery, pray had I made it yet, and 
what was it, at any rate, that I proposed to discover? 
I felt now, in truth, more uncomfortable than I had 
expected in being kept to my obligation, and I beat 
about the bush a little till, instead of meeting it, I 
was able to put the natural question : " What won- 
derful things was Long just saying to you? " 

" Oh, characteristic ones enough — whimsical, 
fanciful, funny. The things he says, you know." 

It was indeed a fresh view. " They strike you as 
characteristic? " 

" Of the man himself and his type of mind? 
Surely. Don't youf He talks to talk, but he's 
really amusing." 

I was watching our companions. " Indeed he is 
— extraordinarily amusing." It was highly inter- 
esting to me to hear at last of Long's " type of 
mind." " See how amusing he is at the present 
moment to Mrs. Server." 

Obert took this in; she was convulsed, in the ex- 
travagance always so pretty as to be pardonable, 
with laughter, and she even looked over at us as 
if to intimate with her shining, lingering eyes that 
we wouldn't be surprised at her transports if we 

59 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

suspected what her entertainer, whom she had 
never known for such a humourist, was saying. In- 
stead of going to find out, all the same, we remained 
another minute together. It was for me, now, I 
could see, that Obert had his best attention. 
" What's the matter with them? " 

It startled me almost as much as if he had asked 
me what was the matter with myself — for that some- 
thing was, under this head, I was by this time un- 
able to ignore. Not twenty minutes had elapsed 
since our meeting with Mrs. Server on the terrace 
had determined Grace Brissenden's elation, but it 
was a fact that my nervousness had taken an ex- 
traordinary stride. I had perhaps not till this in- 
stant been fully aware of it — it was really brought 
out by the way Obert looked at me as if he fancied 
he had heard me shake. Mrs. Server might be nat- 
ural, and Gilbert Long might be, but I should not 
preserve that calm unless I pulled myself well to- 
gether. I made the efTort, facing my sharp inter- 
locutor; and I think it was at this point that I fully 
measured my dismay. I had grown — that was 
what was the matter with me — precipitately, pre- 
posterously anxious. Instead of dropping, the dis- 
comfort produced in me by Mrs. Brissenden had 
deepened to agitation, and this in spite of the fact 
that in the brief interval nothing worse, nothing but 
what was right, had happened. Had I myself sud- 
denly fallen so much in love with Mrs. Server that 

60 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the care for her reputation had become with me an 
obsession? It was of no use saying I simply pitied 
her: what did I pity her for if she wasn't in danger? 
She zuas in danger : that rushed over me at present 
■ — rushed over me while I tried to look easy and de- 
layed to answer my friend. She was in danger — if 
only because she had caught and held the search- 
light of Obert's attention. I took up his inquiry. 
"The matter with them? I don't know anything 
but that they're young and handsome and happy — 
children, as who should say, of the world; children 
of leisure and pleasure and privilege." 

Obert's eyes went back to them. " Do you re- 
member what I said to you about her yesterday 
afternoon? She darts from flower to flower, but 
she clings, for the time, to each. You've been feel- 
ing, I judge, the force of my remark." 

" Oh, she didn't at all ' dart,' " I repHed, " just 
now at me. I darted, much rather, at ]ier." 

" Long didn't, then," Obert said, still with his 
eyes on them. 

I had to wait a moment. " Do you mean he 
struck you as avoiding her? " 

He in turn considered. " He struck me as hav- 
ing noticed with what intensity, ever since we came 
down, she has kept alighting. She inaugurated it, 
the instant she arrived, with tne, and every man of 
us has had his turn. I dare say it's only fair, cer- 
tainly, that Long should have." 

6i 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" He's lucky to get it, the brute ! She's as 
charming as she can possibly be." 

"That's it, precisely; and it's what no woman 
ought to be — as charming as she possibly can! — 
more than once or twice in her life. This lady is 
so every blessed minute, and to every blessed male. 
It's as if she were too awfully afraid one wouldn't 
take it in. If she but knew how one does ! How- 
ever," my friend continued, " you'll recollect that 
we differed about her yesterday — and what does it 
signify? One should of course bear lightly on any- 
thing so light. But I stick to it that she's differ- 
ent." 

I pondered. " Different from whom? " 

" Different from herself — as she was when I 
painted her. There's something the matter with 
her." 

" Ah, then, it's for me to ask you what. I don't 
myself, you see, perceive it." 

He made for a little no answer, and we were both 
indeed by this time taken up with the withdrawal 
of the two other members of our group. They 
moved away together across the shining floor, paus- 
ing, looking up at the painted vault, saying the in- 
evitable things — bringing off their retreat, in short, 
in the best order. It struck me somehow as a re- 
treat, and yet I insisted to myself, once more, on its 
being perfectly natural. At the high door, which 
stood open, they stopped a moment and looked 

62 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

back at us — looked frankly, sociably, as if in con- 
sciousness of our sympathetic attention. Mrs. 
Server waved, as in temporary farewell, a free ex- 
planatory hand at me; she seemed to explain that 
she was now trying somebody else, Obert more- 
over added his explanation. " That's the way she 
collars us." 

" Oh, Long doesn't mind," I said. " But what's 
the way she strikes you as different? " 

" From what she was when she sat to me? Well, 
a part of it is that she can't keep still. She was as 
still then as if she had been paid for it. Now she's 
all over the place." But he came back to some- 
thing else. " I like your talking, my dear man, of 
what you ' don't perceive.' Fve yet to find out 
what that remarkable quantity is. What you do 
perceive has at all events given me so much to think 
about that it doubtless ought to serve me for the 
present. I feel I ought to let you know that you've 
made me also perceive the Brissendens." I of 
course remembered what I had said to him, but it 
was just this that now touched my uneasiness, and 
I only echoed the name, a little blankly, with the in- 
stinct of gaining time. " You put me on them 
wonderfully," Obert continued, " though of course 
I've kept your idea to myself. All the same it sheds 
a great light." 

I could again but feebly repeat it. " A great 
Hght? " 

63 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" As to what may go on even between others still. 
It's a jolly idea — a torch in the darkness; and do 
you know what I've done with it? I've held it up, 
I don't mind telling you, to just the question of the 
change, since this interests you, in Mrs. Server. If 
you've got your mystery I'll be hanged if I won't 
have mine. If you've got your Brissendens I shall 
see what I can do with her. You've given me an 
analogy, and I declare I find it dazzling. I don't 
see the end of what may be done with it. If Bris- 
senden's paying for his wife, for her amazing second 
bloom, who's paying for Mrs. Server? Isn't that — 
what do the newspapers call it? — the missing word? 
Isn't it perhaps in fact just what you told me last 
night you were on the track of? But don't add 
now," he went on, more and more amused with his 
divination, " don't add now that the man's obvi- 
ously Gilbert Long — for I won't be put off with 
anything of the sort. She collared him much too 
markedly. The real man must be one she doesn't 
markedly collar." 

" But I thought that what you a moment ago 
made out was that she so markedly collars all of us." 
This was my immediate reply to Obert's blaze of 
ingenuity, but I none the less saw more things in it 
than I could reply to. I saw, at any rate, and saw 
with relief, that if he should look on the principle 
suggested to him by the case of the Brissendens, 
there would be no danger at all of his finding it. If, 

64 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

accordingly, I was nervous for Mrs. Server, all I had 
to do was to keep him on this false scent. Since it 
was not she who was paid for, but she who possibly 
paid, his fancy might harmlessly divert him till the 
party should disperse. At the same time, in the 
midst of these reflections, the question of the 
" change " in her, which he was in so much better 
a position than I to measure, couldn't help having 
for me its portent, and the sense of that was, no 
doubt, in my next words. *' What makes you 
think that what you speak of was what I had in my 
head?" 

" Well, the way, simply, that the shoe fits. She's 
absolutely not the same person I painted. It's ex- 
actly like Mrs. Brissenden's having been for you 
yesterday not the same person you had last seen 
bearing her name." 

" Very good," I returned, " though I didn't in 
the least mean to set you digging so hard. How- 
ever, dig on your side, by all means, while I dig on 
mine. All I ask of you is complete discretion." 

"Ah, naturally!" 

" We ought to remember," I pursued, even at 
the risk of showing as too sententious, " that suc- 
cess in such an inquiry may perhaps be more em- 
barrassing than failure. To nose about for a re- 
lation that a lady has her reasons for keeping 
secret " 

" Is made not only quite inoffensive, I hold " — 
65 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

he immediately took me up — " but positively hon- 
ourable, by being confined to psychologic evi- 
dence." 

I wondered a little. " Honourable to whom? " 

" Why, to the investigator. Resting on the kind 
of signs that the game takes account of when fairly 
played — resting on psychologic signs alone, it's a 
high application of intelligence. What's ignoble is 
the detective and the keyhole." 

" I see," I after a moment admitted. " I did 
have, last night, my scruples, but you warm me up. 
Yet I confess also," I still added, " that if I do mus- 
ter the courage of my curiosity, it's a little because 
I feel even yet, as I think you also must, altogether 
destitute of a material clue. If I had a material clue 
I should feel ashamed : the fact would be deterrent. 
I start, for my part, at any rate, quite in the dark — 
or in a darkness lighted, at best, by what you have 
called the torch of my analogy. The analogy too," 
I wound up, " may very well be only half a help. 
It was easy to find poor Briss, because poor Briss 
is here, and it's always easy, moreover, to find a 
husband. But say Mrs. Server's poor Briss 
— or his equivalent, whoever it may be — isn't 
here." 

We had begun to walk away with this, but my 
companion pulled up at the door of the room. 
" I'm sure he is. She tells me he's near." 

" ' Tells ' you? " I challenged it, but I uncom- 
66 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

fortably reflected that it was just what I had myself 
told Mrs. Brissenden. 

" She wouldn't be as she is if he weren't. Her 
being as she is is the sign of it. He wasn't present 
— that is he wasn't present in her life at all — when 
I painted her; and the difference we're impressed 
with is exactly the proof that he is now." 

My difficulty in profiting by the relief he had so 
unconsciously afforded me resided of course in my 
not feeling free to show for quite as impressed as he 
was. I hadn't really made out at all what he was 
impressed with, and I should only have spoiled 
everything by inviting him to be definite. This 
was a little of a worry, for I should have liked to 
know; but on the other hand I felt my track at pres- 
ent effectually covered. " Well, then, grant he's 
one of us. There are more than a dozen of us — 
a dozen even with you and me and Brissenden 
counted out. The hitch is that we're nowhere 
without a primary lead. As to Brissenden there 
was the lead." 

" You mean as afforded by his wife's bloated 
state, which was a signal ? " 

" Precisely : for the search for something or other 
that would help to explain it. Given his wife's 
bloated state, his own shrunken one was what was 
to have been predicated. I knew definitely, in 
other words, what to look for." 

" Whereas we don't know here? " 
67 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Mrs. Server's state, unfortunately," I replied, 
" is not bloated." 

He laughed at my " unfortunately," though rec- 
ognising that I spoke merely from the point of 
view of lucidity, and presently remarked that he had 
his own idea. He didn't say what it was, and I 
didn't ask, intimating thereby that I held it to be 
in this manner we were playing the game; but I in- 
dulgently questioned it in the light of its not yet 
having assisted him. He answered that the min- 
utes we had just passed were what had made the 
difference; it had sprung from the strong effect 
produced on him after she came in with me. " It's 
but now I really see her. She did and said nothing 
special, nothing striking or extraordinary; but that 
didn't matter — it never does: one saw how she is. 
She's nothing but that." 

" Nothing but what?" 

" She's all in it," he insisted. " Or it's all in her. 
It comes to the same thing." 

" Of course it's all in her," I said as impatiently 
as I could, though his attestation — for I wholly 
trusted his perception — left me so much in his debt. 
" That's what we start with, isn't it? It leaves us 
as far as ever from what we must arrive at." 

But he was too interested in his idea to heed my 
question. He was wrapped in the " psychologic " 
glow. "I have her \" 

" Ah, but it's a question of having him.' " 
68 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

He looked at me on this as if I had brought him 
back to a mere detail, and after an instant the light 
went out of his face. " So it is. I leave it to you. 
I don't care." His drop had the usual suddenness 
of the drops of the artistic temperament. " Look 
for the last man," he nevertheless, but with more 
detachment, added. " I daresay it would be he." 

" The last? In what sense the last? " 

" Well, the last sort of creature who could be 
believed of her," 

" Oh," I rejoined as we went on, " the great bar 
to that is that such a sort of creature as the last 
won't be here ! " 

He hesitated. " So much the better. I give 
him, at any rate, wherever he is, up to you." 

" Thank you," I returned, " for the beauty of the 
present! You do see, then, that our psychologic 
glow doesn't, after all, prevent the thing " 

" From being none of one's business? Yes. 
Poor little woman ! " He seemed somehow satis- 
fied; he threw it all up. " It isn't any of one's busi- 
ness, is it? " 

" Why, that's what I was telling you," I impa- 
tiently exclaimed, " that / feel ! " 



69 



THE first thing that happened to me after part- 
ing with him was to find myself again en- 
gaged with Mrs. Brissenden, still full of the quick 
conviction with which I had left her. " It is she — 
quite unmistakably, you know. I don't see how I 
can have been so stupid as not to make it out. I 
haven't your cleverness, of course, till my nose is 
rubbed into a thing. But when it is — !" She 
celebrated her humility in a laugh that was proud. 
" The two are off together." 

"Off where?" 

" I don't know where, but I saw them a few min- 
utes ago most distinctly ' slope.' They've gone for 
a quiet, unwatched hour, poor dears, out into the 
park or the gardens. When one knows it, it's all 
there. But what's that vulgar song? — ' You've 
got to know it first ! ' It strikes me, if you don't 
mind my telling you so, that the way you get hold 
of things is positively uncanny. I mean as regards 
what first marked her for you." 

" But, my dear lady," I protested, " nothing at 
all first marked her for me. She isn't marked for 

70 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

me, first or last. It was only you who so jumped 
at her." 

My interlocutress stared, and I had at this mo- 
ment, I remember, an almost intolerable sense of 
her fatuity and cruelty. They were all unconscious, 
but they were, at that stage, none the less irritating. 
Her fine bosom heaved, her blue eyes expanded 
with her successful, her simplified egotism. I 
couldn't, in short, I found, bear her being so keen 
about Mrs. Server while she was so stupid about 
poor Briss. She seemed to recall to me nobly the 
fact that she hadn't a lover. No, she was only eat- 
ing poor Briss up inch by inch, but she hadn't a 
lover. " I don't," I insisted, " see in Mrs. Server 
any of the right signs." 

She looked almost indignant. " Even after your 
telling me that you see in Lady John only the wrong 
ones? " 

" Ah, but there are other women here than Mrs. 
Server and Lady John." 

" Certainly. But didn't we, a moment ago, think 
of them all and dismiss them? If Lady John's out 
of the question, how can Mrs. Server possibly not 
be in it? We want a fool " 

" Ah, do we? " I interruptingly wailed. 

" Why, exactly by your own theory, in which 
you've so much interested me! It was you who 
struck off the idea." 

" That we want a fool? " I felt myself turning 
71 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

gloomy enough. *' Do we really want anyone at 
all?" 

She gave me, in momentary silence, a strange 
smile. "Ah, you want to take it back now? 
You're sorry you spoke. My dear man, you may 

be " but that didn't hinder the fact, in short, 

that I had kindled near me a fine, if modest and 
timid, intelligence. There did remain the truth of 
our friend's striking development, to which I had 
called her attention. Regretting my rashness 
didn't make the prodigy less. " You'll lead me to 
believe, if you back out, that there's suddenly some- 
one you want to protect. Weak man," she ex- 
claimed with an assurance from which, I confess, I 
was to take alarm, " something has happened to 
you since we separated ! Weak man," she repeated 
with dreadful gaiety, " you've been squared ! " 

I Hterally blushed for her. " Squared? " 

" Does it inconveniently happen that you find 
j'-ou're in love with her yourself? " 

" Well," I replied on quick reflection, " do, if you 
like, call it that; for you see what a motive it gives 
me for being, in such a matter as this wonderful 
one that you and I happened to find ourselves for 
a moment making so free with, absolutely sure 
about her. I am absolutely sure. There! She 
won't do. And for your postulate that she's at the 
present moment in some sequestered spot in Long's 
company, suffer me without delay to correct it. 

72 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It won't hold water. If you'll go into the library, 
through which I have just passed, you'll find her 
there in the company of the Comte de Dreuil." 

Mrs. Briss stared again. " Already? She zvas, 
at any rate, with Mr. Long, and she told me on my 
meeting them that they had just come from the 
pastels." 

" Exactly. They met there — she and I having 
gone together; and they retired together under my 
eyes. They must have parted, clearly, the moment 
after." 

She took it all in, turned it all over. " Then 
what does that prove but that they're afraid to be 
seen? " 

" Ah, they're not afraid, since both you and I saw 
them ! " 

*' Oh, only just long enough for them to publish 
themselves as not avoiding each other. All the 
same, you know," she said, " they do." 

" Do avoid each other? How is your belief in 
that," I asked, " consistent with your belief that 
they parade together in the park? " 

"They ignore each other in public; they fore- 
gather in private." 

" Ah, but they don't — since, as I tell you, she's 
even while we talk the centre of the mystic circle of 
the twaddle of M. de Dreuil; chained to a stake if 
you can be. Besides," I wound up, " it's not only 
that she's not the ' right fool ' — it's simply that she's 

73 ; 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

not a fool at all. We want the woman who has been 
rendered most inane. But this lady hasn't been 
rendered so in any degree. She's the reverse of in- 
ane. She's in full possession." 

" In full possession of what? " 

" Why, of herself." 

"Like Lady John?" 

I had unfortunately to discriminate here. " No, 
not like Lady John." 

" Like whom then?" 

" Like anyone. Like me; like you; like Brissen- 
den. Don't I satisfy you? " I asked in a moment. 

She only looked at me a little, handsome and 
hard. " If you wished to satisfy me so easily you 
shouldn't have made suth a point of working me up. 
I daresay I, after all, however," she added, " notice 
more things than you." 

" As for instance? " 

" Well, May Server last evening. I was not quite 
conscious at the time that I did, but when one has 
had the ' tip ' one looks back and sees things in a 
new light." 

It was doubtless because my friend irritated me 
more and more that I met this with a sharpness pos- 
sibly excessive. " She's perfectly natural. What 
I saw was a test. And so is he." 

But she gave me no heed. " If there hadn't 
been so many people I should have noticed of my- 
self after dinner that there was something the mat- 

74 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ter with her. I should have seen what it was. She 
was all over the place." 

She expressed it as the poor lady's other critic 
had done, but this didn't shut my mouth. " Ah, 
then, in spite of the people, you did notice. What 
do you mean by ' all over the place '? " 

" She couldn't keep still. She was different from 
the woman one had last seen. She used to be so 
calm — as if she were always sitting for her portrait. 
Wasn't she in fact always being painted in a pink 
frock and one row of pearls, always staring out at 
you in exhibitions, as if she were saying ' Here they 
are again '? Last night she was on the rush." 

"The rush? Oh!" 

" Yes, positively — from one man to another. 
She was on the pounce. She talked to ten in suc- 
cession, making up to them in the most extraordi- 
nary way and leaving them still more crazily. 
She's as nervous as a cat. Put it to any man here, 
and see if he doesn't tell you." 

" I should think it quite unpleasant to put it to 
any man here," I returned; " and I should have been 
sure you would have thought it the same. I spoke 
to you in the deepest confidence." 

Mrs. Brissenden's look at me was for a moment 
of the least accommodating; then it changed to an 
intelligent smile. "How you are protecting her! 
But don't cry out," she added, " before you're hurt. 
Since your confidence has distinguished me — 

75 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

though I don't quite see why — you may be sure I 
haven't breathed. So I all the more resent your 
making me a scene on the extraordinary ground 
that I've observed as well as yourself. Perhaps 
what you don't like is that my observation may be 
turned on you. I confess it is." 

It was difficult to bear being put in the wrong 
by her, but I made an effort that I believe was not 
unsuccessful to recover my good humour. " It's 
not in the least to your observation that I object, 
it's to the extravagant inferences you draw from it. 
Of course, however, I admit I always want to pro- 
tect the innocent. What does she gain, on your 
theory, by her rushing and pouncing? Had she 
pounced on Brissenden when we met him with her? 
Are you so very sure he hadn't pounced on Jicrf 
They had, at all events, to me, quite the air of people 
settled; she was not, it was clear, at that moment 
meditating a change. It was we, if you remember, 
who had absolutely to pull them apart." 

" Is it your idea to make out," Mrs. Brissenden 
inquired in answer to this, " that she has suddenly 
had the happy thought of a passion for my hus- 
band?" 

A new possibility, as she spoke, came to me with 
a whirr of wings, and I half expressed it. " She 
may have a sympathy." 

My interlocutress gazed at space. " You mean 
she may be sorry for him? On what ground? " 

76 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I had gone too far indeed; but I got off as I could. 
" You neglect him so ! But what is she, at any 
rate," I went on, " nervous — as nervous as you de- 
scribe her — about f " 

" About her danger; the contingency of its being 
fixed upon them — an intimacy so thoroughgoing 
that they can scarcely afiford to let it be seen even 
as a mere acquaintance. Think of the circum- 
stances — her personal ones, I mean, and admit that 
it wouldn't do. It would be too bad a case. 
There's everything to make it so. They must live 
on pins and needles. Anything proved would go 
tremendously hard for her." 

" In spite of which you're surprised that I ' pro- 
tect ' her?" 

It was a question, however, that my companion 
could meet. " From people in general, no. From 
me in particular, yes." 

In justice to Mrs. Brissenden I thought a mo- 
ment. " Well, then, let us be fair all round. That 
you don't, as you say, breathe is a discretion I ap- 
preciate; all the more that a little inquiry, tactfully 
pursued, would enable you to judge whether any 
independent suspicion does attach. A Httle loose 
collateral evidence migJii be picked up; and your 
scorning to handle it is no more than I should, after 
all, have expected of you." 

" Thank you for ' after all ' ! " My companion 
tossed her head. " I know for myself what I scorn 

77 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

to handle. Quite apart from that there's another 
matter. You must have noticed yourself that when 
people are so much liked " 

" There's a kind of general, amiable consensus of 
blindness? Yes — one can think of cases. Popu- 
larity shelters and hallows — has the effect of mak- 
ing a good-natured world agree not to see." 

My friend seemed pleased that I so sufficiently 
understood. " This evidently has been a case then 
in which it has not only agreed not to see, but 
agreed not even to look. It has agreed in fact to 
look straight the other way. They say there's no 
smoke without fire, but it appears there may be fire 
without smoke. I'm satisfied, at all events, that 
one wouldn't in connection with these two find the 
least little puff. Isn't that just what makes the 
magnificence of their success — the success that re- 
duces us to playing over them with mere moon- 
shine?" She thought of it; seemed fairly to envy 
it. " I've never seen such luck ! " 

" A rare case of the beauty of impunity as impu- 
nity? " I laughed. " Such a case puts a price on 
passions otherwise to be deprecated? I'm glad in- 
deed you admit we're ' reduced.' We are reduced. 
But what I meant to say just now was that if you'll 
continue to join in the genial conspiracy while I do 
the same — each of us making an exception only 
for the other — I'll pledge myself absolutely to the 
straight course. If before we separate I've seen 

78 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

reason to change my mind, I'll loyally let you 
know." 

" What good will that do me," she asked, " if you 
don't change your mind? You won't change it if 
you shut your eyes to her." 

" Ah, I feel I can't do that now. I am interested. 
The proof of that is," I pursued, " that I appeal to 
you for another impression of your own. I still 
don't see the logic of her general importunity." 

" The logic is simply that she has a terror of ap- 
pearing to encourage anyone in particular." 

" Why then isn't it in her own interest, for the 
sake of the screen, just to do that? The appearance 
of someone in particular would be exactly the oppo- 
site of the appearance of Long. Your own admis- 
sion is that that's his line with Lady John." 

Mrs. Brissenden took her view. " Oh, she 
doesn't want to do anything so like the real thing. 
And, as for what he does, they don't feel in the same 
way. He's not nervous." 

*' Then why does he go in for a screen? " 

" I mean " — she readily modified it — " that he's 
not so nervous as May. Lie hasn't the same rea- 
sons for panic. A man never has. Besides, there's 
not so much in Mr, Long to show " 

" What, by my notion, has taken place? Why 
not, if it was precisely by the change in him that my 
notion was inspired? Any change in her I know 
comparatively little about." 

79 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

We hovered so near the case of Mr, and Mrs. 
Brissenden that it positively excited me, and all the 
more for her sustained unconsciousness. " Oh, the 
man's not aware of his own change. He doesn't 
see it as we do. It's all to his advantage." 

" But we see it to his advantage. How should 
that prevent? " 

" We see it to the advantage of his mind and his 
talk, but not to that of " 

" Well, what? " I pressed as she pulled up. 

She was thinking how to name such mysteries. 
" His delicacy. His consideration. His thought 
for her. He would think for her if he weren't selfish. 
But he is selfish — too much so to spare her, to be 
generous, to realise. It's only, after all," she sagely 
went on, feeding me again, as I winced to feel, with 
profundity of my own sort, " it's only an excessive 
case, a case that in him happens to show as what the 
doctors call ' fine,' of what goes on whenever two 
persons are so much mixed up. One of them always 
gets more out of it than the other. One of them — 
you know the saying — gives the lips, the other gives 
the cheek." 

" It's the deepest of all truths. Yet the cheek 
profits too," I more prudently argued. 

" It profits most. It takes and keeps and uses all 
the lips give. The cheek, accordingly," she con- 
tinued to point out, " is Mr. Long's. The lips are 
what we began by looking for. We've found them. 

80 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

They're drained — they're dry, the Hps. Mr. Long 
finds his improvement natural and beautiful. He 
revels in it. He takes it for granted. He's sub- 
lime." 

It kept me for a minute staring at her. " So — 
do you know? — are yoii! " 

She received this wholly as a tribute to her acute- 
ness, and was therefore proportionately gracious. 
" That's only because it's catching. You've made 
me sublime. You found me dense. You've affect- 
ed me quite as Mrs. Server has affected Mr. Long. 
I don't pretend I show it," she added, " quite as 
much as he does." 

" Because that would entail my showing it as 
much as, by your contention, she does? Well, I 
confess," I declared, " I do feel remarkably like that 
pair of lips. I feel drained — I feel dry ! " Her an- 
swer to this, with another toss of her head, was ex- 
travagant enough to mean forgiveness — was that I 
was impertinent, and her action in support of her 
charge was to move away from me, taking her 
course again to the terrace, easily accessible from 
the room in which we had been talking. She passed 
out of the window that opened to the ground, and 
I watched her while, in the brighter light, she put up 
her pink parasol. She walked a few paces, as if to 
look about her for a change of company, and by this 
time had reached a flight of steps that descended 
to a lower level. On observing that here, in the act 

Si 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

to g"o down, she suddenly paused, I knew she had 
been checked by something seen below and that this 
was what made her turn the next moment to give 
me a look. I took it as an invitation to rejoin her, 
and I perceived when I had done so what had led 
her to appeal to me. We commanded from the 
point in question one of the shady slopes of the 
park and in particular a spreading beech, the trunk 
of which had been inclosed with a rustic circular 
bench, a convenience that appeared to have offered, 
for the moment, a sense of leafy luxury to a lady 
in pale blue. She leaned back, her figure presented 
in profile and her head a little averted as if for talk 
with some one on the other side of her, someone so 
placed as to be lost to our view. 

" There ! " triumphed Mrs. Brissenden again — 
for the lady was unmistakably Mrs. Server. Amuse- 
ment was inevitable — the fact showed her as so cor- 
rectly described by the words to which I had twice 
had to listen. She seemed really all over the place. 
" I thought you said," my companion remarked, 
" that you had left her tucked away somewhere with 
M. de Dreuil." 

" Well," I returned after consideration, " that is 
obviously M. de Dreuil." 

"Are you so sure? I don't make out the per- 
son," my friend continued — " I only see she's not 
alone. I understood you moreover that you had 
lately left them in the house." 

82 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" They were in the house, but there was nothing 
to keep them from coming out. They've had 
plenty of time while we've talked; they must have 
passed down by some of the other steps. Perhaps 
also," I added, " it's another man." 

But by this time she was satisfied. " It's he! " 

" Gilbert Long? I thought you just said," I 
observed, " that you can make nobody out." 

We watched together, but the distance was con- 
siderable, and the second figure continued to be 
screened. " It must be he," Mrs. Brissenden re- 
sumed with impatience, '' since it was with him I 
so distinctly saw her." 

" Let me once more hold you to the fact," I an- 
swered, " that she had, to my knowledge, suc- 
cumbed to M. de Dreuil afterwards. The moments 
have fled, you see, in our fascinating discussion, 
and various things, on your theory of her pounce, 
have come and gone. Don't I moreover make out 
a brown shoe, in a white gaiter, protruding from the 
other side of her dress? It must be Lord Lutley." 

Mrs. Brissenden looked and mused. " A brown 
shoe in a white gaiter? " At this moment Mrs. 
Server moved, and the next — as if it were time for 
another pounce — she had got up. We could, how- 
ever, still distinguish but a shoulder and an out- 
stretched leg of her gentleman, who, on her move- 
ment, appeared, as in protest, to have afHrmed by 
an emphatic shift of his seat his preference for their 

83 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

remaining as they were. This carried him further 
round the tree. We thus lost him, but she stood 
there while we waited, evidently exhorting him; 
after a minute of which she came away as in confi- 
dence that he would follow. During this process, 
with a face more visible, she had looked as charming 
as a pretty woman almost always does in rising elo- 
quent before the apathetic male. She hadn't yet 
noticed us, but something in her attitude and man- 
ner particularly spoke to me. There were implica- 
tions in it to which I couldn't be blind, and I felt 
how my neighbour also would have caught them 
and been confirmed in her certitude. In fact I felt 
the breath of her confirmation in another elated 
" There ! " — in a " Look at her nozu! " Incontest- 
ably, while not yet aware of us, Mrs. Server con- 
fessed with every turn of her head to a part in a rela- 
tion. It stuck out of her, her part in a relation; it 
hung before us, her part in a relation; it was large to 
us beyond the breadth of the glade. And since, ofif 
her guard, she so let us have it, with whom in the 
world could the relation — so much of one as that — 
be but with Gilbert Long? The question was not 
settled till she had come on some distance; then the 
producer of our tension, emerging and coming after 
her, ofifered himself to our united, to our confound- 
ed, anxiety once more as poor Briss. 

That we should have been confounded was doubt- 
less but a proof of the impression — the singular 

84 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

assurance of intimacy borne toward us on the soft 
summer air — that we had, however delusively, re- 
ceived. I should myself have been as ready as my 
neighbour to say " Whoever he is, they're in deep ! " 
— and on grounds, moreover, quite as recklessly, 
as fantastically constructive as hers. There was 
nothing to explain our impression but the fact of 
our already having seen them figure together, and 
of this we needed breathing-time to give them the 
natural benefit. It was not indeed as an absolute 
benefit for either that Grace Brissenden's tone 
marked our recognition. " Dear Guy again f " — 
but she had recovered herself enough to laugh. " I 
should have thought he had had more than his 
turn!" She had recovered herself in fact much 
more than I; for somehow, from this instant, con- 
vinced as she had been and turning everything to 
her conviction, I found myself dealing, in thought, 
with still larger material. It was odd what a differ- 
ence was made for me by the renewed sight of dear 
Guy. I didn't of course analyse this sense at the 
time; that was still to come. Our friends mean- 
while had noticed us, and something clearly passed 
between them — it almost produced, for an instant, 
a visible arrest in their advance — on the question of 
their having perhaps been for some time exposed. 

They came on, however, and I waved them from 
afar a greeting, to which Mrs. Server alone replied. 
Distances were great at Newmarch and landscape- 

85 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

gardening on the grand scale; it would take them 
still some minutes to reach our place of vantage or 
to arrive within sound of speech. There was ac- 
cordingly nothing marked in our turning away and 
strolling back to the house. We had been so in- 
tent that we confessed by this movement to a quick 
impulse to disown it. Yet it was remarkable that, 
before we went in, Mrs. Brissenden should have 
struck me afresh as having got all she wanted. Her 
recovery from our surprise was already so complete 
that her high lucidity now alone reigned. " You 
don't require, I suppose, anything more than that? " 

" Well, I don't quite see, I'm bound to say, just 
where even ' that ' comes in." It incommoded me 
singularly little, at the point to which I had jumped, 
that this statement was the exact reverse of the 
truth. Where it came in was what I happened to 
be in the very act of seeing — seeing to the exclusion 
of almost everything else. It was sufficient that I 
might perhaps feel myself to have done at last with 
Mrs. Brissenden. I desired, at all events, quite as 
if this benefit were assured me, to leave her the 
honours of the last word. 

She was finely enough prepared to take them. 

" Why, this invention of using my husband ! " 

She fairly gasped at having to explain. 

"Of 'using 'him?" 

" Trailing him across the scent as she does all of 
you, one after the other. Excuse my comparing 

86 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

you to so many red herrings. You each have your 
turn; only his seems repeated, poor dear, till he's 
quite worn out with it." 

I kept for a little this image in my eye. " I can 
see of course that his whole situation must be some- 
thing of a strain for him ; for I've not forgotten what 
you told me yesterday of his service with Lady John. 
To have to work in such a v/ay for two of them at 
once " — it couldn't help, I admitted, being a tax on 
a fellow. Besides, when one came to think of it, 
the same man couldn't be tzuo red herrings. To 
show as Mrs. Server's would directly impair his 
power to show as Lady John's. It would seem, in 
short, a matter for his patronesses to have out 
together. 

Mrs. Brissenden betrayed, on this, some annoy- 
ance at my levity. " Oh, the cases are not the same, 
for with Lady John it amuses him : he thinks he 
knows." 

"Knows what?" 

" What she wants him for. He doesn't know " — 
she kept it wonderfully clear — " that she really 
doesn't want him for anything; for anything except, 
of course " — this came as a droll second thought — 
" himself." 

" And he doesn't know, either " — I tried to re- 
main at her level — " that Mrs. Server does." 

" No," she assented, " he doesn't know what it's 
her idea to do with him." 

87 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" He doesn't know, in fine," I cheerfully pursued, 
" the truth about anything. And of course, by your 
agreement with me, he's not to learn it." 

She recognised her agreement with me, yet 
looked as if she had reserved a certain measure of 
freedom. Then she handsomely gave up even that. 
" I certainly don't want him to become conscious." 

" It's his unconsciousness," I declared, " that 
saves him." 

" Yes, even from himself." 

" We must accordingly feed it." In the house, 
with intention, we parted company; but there was 
something that, before this, I felt it due to my claim 
of consistency to bring out. "' It wasn't, at all 
events, Gilbert Long behind the tree ! " 

My triumph, however, beneath the sponge she 
was prepared to pass again over much of our ex- 
perience, was short-lived. " Of course it wasn't. 
We shouldn't have been treated to the scene if it had 
been. What could she possibly have put poor Briss 
there for but just to show it wasn't? " 



88 



VI 



I SAW other things, many things, after this, but 
I had already so much matter for reflection that 
I saw them almost in spite of myself. The difficulty 
with me was in the momentum already acquired by 
the act — as well as, doubtless, by the general habit — 
of observation. I remember indeed that on sepa- 
rating from Mrs. Brissenden I took a lively resolve 
to get rid of my ridiculous obsession. It was absurd 
to have consented to such immersion, intellectually 
speaking, in the affairs of other people. One had 
always afifairs of one's own, and I was positively 
neglecting mine. Such, for a while, was my fore- 
most reflection; after which, in their order or out of 
it, came an inevitable train of others. One of the 
first of these was that, frankly, my affairs were by 
this time pretty well used to my neglect. There 
were connections enough in which it had never 
failed. A whole cluster of such connections, effect- 
ually displacing the centre of interest, now sur- 
rounded me, and I was — though always but intel- 
lectually — drawn into their circle. I did my best 
for the rest of the day to turn my back on them, but 
with the prompt result of feeling that I meddled with 

89 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

them almost more in thinking them over in isolation 
than in hovering personally about them. Reflec- 
tion was the real intensity; reflection, as to poor Mrs. 
Server in particular, was an indiscreet opening of 
doors. She became vivid in the light of the so 
limited vision of her that I already possessed — try 
positively as I would not further to extend it. It 
was something not to ask another question, to keep 
constantly away both from Mrs. Brissenden and 
from Ford Obert, whom I had rashly invited to a 
degree of participation; it was something to talk as 
hard as possible with other persons and on other 
subjects, to mingle in groups much more superficial 
than they supposed themselves, to give ear to 
broader jokes, to discuss more tangible mysteries. 

The day, as it developed, was large and hot, an un- 
stinted splendour of summer; excursions, exercise, 
organised amusement were things admirably spared 
us; life became a mere arrested ramble or stimulated 
lounge, and we profited to the full by the noble 
freedom of Newmarch, that overarching ease which 
in nothing was so marked as in the tolerance of talk. 
The air of the place itself, in such conditions, left 
one's powers with a sense of play; if one wanted 
something to play at one simply played at being 
there. I did this myself, with the aid, in especial, 
of two or three solitary strolls, unaccompanied dips, 
of half an hour a-piece, into outlying parts of the 
house and the grounds. I must add that while I 

90 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

resorted to such measures not to see I only fixed 
what I had seen, what I did see, the more in my 
mind. One of these things had been the way that, 
at luncheon, Gilbert Long, watching the chance 
given him by the loose order in which we moved to 
it, slipped, to the visible defeat of somebody else, 
into the chair of conspicuity beside clever Lady 
John. A second was that Mrs. Server then occu- 
pied a place as remote as possible from this couple, 
but not from Guy Brissenden, who had found means 
to seat himself next her while my notice was en- 
gaged by the others. What I was at the same time 
supremely struck with could doubtless only be Mrs. 
Server's bright ubiquity, as it had at last come to 
seem to me, and that of the companions she had 
recruited for the occasion. Attended constantly by 
a dififerent gentleman, she was in the range of my 
vision wherever I turned — she kept repeating her 
picture in settings separated by such intervals that 
I wondered at the celerity with which she proceeded 
from spot to spot. She was never discernibly out 
of breath, though the associate of her ecstasy at the 
given moment might have been taken as being; and 
I kept getting afresh the impression which, the day 
before, had so promptly followed my arrival, the odd 
impression, as of something the matter with each 
party, that I had gathered, in the grounds, from the 
sight of her advance upon me with Obert. I had by 
this time of course made out — and it was absurd to 

91 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

shut my eyes to it — what that particular something, 
at least, was. It was that Obert had quickly per- 
ceived something to be the matter with Jier, and that 
she, on her side, had become aware of his discovery. 
I wondered hereupon if the discovery were in- 
evitable for each gentleman in succession, and if 
this were their reason for changing so often. Did 
everyone leave her, like Obert, w^ith an uneasy im- 
pression of her, and were these impressions now 
passed about with private hilarity or profundity, 
though without having reached me save from the 
source I have named? I affected myself as con- 
stantly catching her eye, as if she wished to call 
my attention to the fact of who was with her and 
who was not. I had kept my distance since our 
episode with the pastels, and yet nothing could more 
come home to me than that I had really not, since 
then, been absent from her. We met without talk, 
but not, thanks to these pointed looks, without con- 
tact. I daresay that, for that matter, my cogita- 
tions — for I must have bristled with them — would 
have made me as stiff a puzzle to interpretative 
minds as I had suffered other phenomena to become 
to my own. I daresay I wandered with a tell-tale 
restlessness of which the practical detachment 
might well have mystified those who hadn't sus- 
picions. Whenever I caught Mrs. Server's eye it 
was really to wonder how many suspicions she had. 
I came upon her in great dim chambers, and I came 

92 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

upon her before sweeps of view. I came upon her 
once more with the Comte de Dreuil, with Lord 
Lutley, with Ford Obert, with almost every other 
man in the house, and with several of these, as if 
there had not been enough for so many turns, two 
or three times over. Only at no moment, whatever 
the favouring frame, did I come upon her with Gil- 
bert Long. It was of course an anomaly that, as an 
easy accident, I was not again myself set in the 
favouring frame. That I consistently escaped be- 
ing might indeed have been the meaning most 
marked in our mute recognitions. 

Discretion, then, I finally felt, played an odd part 
when it simply left one more attached, morally, to 
one's prey. What was most evident to me by five 
o'clock in the afternoon was that I was too pre- 
occupied not to find it the best wisdom to accept 
my mood. It was all very well to run away; there 
would be no effectual running away but to have 
my things quickly packed and catch, if possible, a 
train for town. On the spot I had to be on it; and 
it began to dawn before me that there was some- 
thing quite other I possibly might do with Mrs. Ser- 
ver than endeavour ineffectually to forget her. 
What was none of one's business might change its 
name should importunity take the form of utility. 
In resisted observation that was vivid thought, in 
inevitable thought that was vivid observation, 
through a succession, in short, of phases in which I 

93 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

shall not pretend to distinguish one of these ele- 
ments from the other, I found myself cherishing 
the fruit of the seed dropped equally by Ford Obert 
and by Mrs. Briss. What was the matter with mef 
— so much as that I had ended by asking myself; 
and the answer had come as an unmistakable return 
of the anxiety produced in me by my first seeing 
that I had fairly let Grace Brissenden loose. My 
original protest against the flash of inspiration in 
which she had fixed responsibility on Mrs. Server 
had been in fact, I now saw, but the scared presenti- 
ment of something in store for myself. This scare, 
to express it sharply, had verily not left me from 
that moment; and if I had been already then anxious 
it was because I had felt myself foredoomed to be 
sure the poor lady herself would be. Why I should 
have minded this, should have been anxious at her 
anxiety and scared at her scare, was a question 
troubling me too little on the spot for me to suffer 
it to trouble me, as a painter of my state, in this 
place. It is sufificient that when so much of the 
afternoon had waned as to bring signs of the service 
of tea in the open air, I knew how far I was gone 
in pity for her. For I had at last had to take in 
what my two interlocutors had given me. Their 
impression, coinciding and, as one might say, dis- 
interested, couldn't, after a little, fail in some degree 
to impose itself. It had its value. Mrs. Server was 
" nervous." 

94 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It little mattered to me now that Mrs. Briss had 
put it to me — that I had even whimsically put it 
to myself — that I was perhaps in love with her. 
That was as good a name as another for an interest 
springing up in an hour, and was moreover a decent 
working hypothesis. The sentiment had not in- 
deed asserted itself at " first sight," though it might 
have taken its place remarkably well among the 
phenomena of what is known as second. The real 
fact was, none the less, that I was quite too sorry for 
her to be anything except sorry. This odd feeling 
was something that I may as well say I shall not 
even now attempt to account for — partly, it is true, 
because my recital of the rest of what I was to see 
in no small measure does so. It was a force that I 
at this stage simply found I had already succumbed 
to. If it was not the result of what I had granted 
to myself was the matter with her, then it was rather 
the very cause of my making that concession. It 
was a different thing from my first prompt impulse 
to shield her. I had already shielded her — fought 
for her so far as I could or as the case immediately 
required. My own sense of how I was affected had 
practically cleared up, in short, in the presence of 
this deeper vision of her. My divinations and in- 
ductions had finally brought home to me that in the 
whole huge, brilliant, crowded place I was the only 
person save one who was in anything that could be 
called a relation to her. The other person's relation 

95 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

was concealed, and mine, so far as she herself was 
concerned, was unexpressed — so that I suppose 
what most, at the juncture in question, stirred within 
me was the wonder of how I might successfully ex- 
press it. I felt that so long as I didn't express it 
I should be haunted with the idea of something in- 
finitely touching and tragic in her loneliness — pos- 
sibly in her torment, in her terror. If she was 
" nervous " to the tune I had come to recognise, 
it could only be because she had grounds. And 
what might her grounds more naturally be than 
that, arranged and arrayed, disguised and decorated, 
pursuing in vain, through our careless company, 
her search for the right shade of apparent security, 
she felt herself none the less all the while the restless 
victim of fear and failure? 

Once my imagination had seen her in this light 
the touches it could add to the picture might be 
trusted to be telling. Further observation was to 
convince me of their truth, but while I waited for it 
with my apprehension that it would come in spite 
of me I easily multiplied and lavished them. I 
made out above all what she would most be trying 
to hide. It was not, so to speak, the guarded pri- 
mary fact — it could only be, wretched woman, that 
produced, that disastrous, treacherous consequence 
of the fact which her faculties would exhibit, and 
most of all the snapped cord of her faculty of talk. 
Guy Brissenden had, at the worst, his compromised 

96 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

face and figure to show and to shroud — if he were 
really, that is, as much aware of them as one had 
suspected. She had her whole compromised ma- 
chinery of thought and speech, and if these signs 
were not, like his, external, that made her case but 
the harder, for she had to create, with intelligence 
rapidly ebbing, with wit half gone, the illusion of 
an unimpaired estate. She was like some unhappy 
lady robbed of her best jewels — obliged so to dis- 
pose and distribute the minor trinkets that had es- 
caped as still to give the impression of a rich ecrin. 
Was not that embarrassment, if one analysed a little, 
at the bottom of her having been all day, in the 
vulgar phrase and as the three of us had too cruelly 
noted, all over the place? Was indeed, for that 
matter, this observation confined to us, or had it 
at last been irrepressibly determined on the part of 
the company at large? This was a question, I 
hasten to add, that I would not now for the world 
have put to the test. I felt I should have known 
how to escape had any rumour of wonder at Mrs. 
Server's ways been finally conveyed to me. I might 
from this moment have, as much as I liked, my own 
sense of it, but I was definitely conscious of a sort 
of loyalty to her that would have rendered me blank 
before others : though not indeed that — oh, at last, 
quite the contrary ! — it would have forbidden me to 
watch and watch. I positively dreaded the acci- 
dent of my being asked by one of the men if I knew 

97 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

how everyone was talking about her. If everyone 
was talking about her, I wanted positively not to 
know. But nobody was, probably — they scarcely 
could be as yet. Without suggestive collateral evi- 
dence there would be nobody in the house so con- 
scientiously infernal as Mrs. Brissenden, Obert 
and I. 

Newmarch had always, in our time, carried itself 
as the great asylum of the finer wit, more or less 
expressly giving out that, as invoking hospitality 
or other countenance, none of the stupid, none even 
of the votaries of the grossly obvious, need apply; 
but I could luckily at present reflect that its meas- 
urements in this direction had not always been my 
own, and that, moreover, whatever precision they 
possessed, human blandness, even in such happy 
halls, had not been quite abolished. There was a 
sound law in virtue of which one could always — 
alike in privileged and unprivileged circles — rest 
more on people's density than on their penetrabil- 
ity. Wasn't it their density too that would be prac- 
tically nearest their good nature? Whatever her 
successive partners of a moment might have no- 
ticed, they wouldn't have discovered in her reason 
for dropping them quickly a principle of fear that 
they might notice her failure articulately to keep 
up. My own actual vision, which had developed 
with such affluence, was that, in a given case, she 
could keep up but for a few minutes and was there- 

98 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

fore obliged to bring the contact to an end before 
exposure. I had consistently mastered her predic- 
ament: she had at once to cultivate contacts, so 
that people shouldn't guess her real concentration, 
and to make them a literal touch and go, so that 
they shouldn't suspect the enfeeblement of her 
mind. It was obviously still worth everything to 
her that she was so charming. I had theorised 
with Mrs. Brissenden on her supposititious inanity, 
but the explanation of such cynicism in either of us 
could only be a sensibility to the truth that attrac- 
tions so great might float her even a long time after 
intelligence pure and simple should have collapsed. 
Was not my present uneasiness, none the less, a 
private curiosity to ascertain just how much or how 
little of that element she had saved from the wreck? 
She dodged, doubled, managed, broke off, clutch- 
ing occasions, yet doubtless risking dumbnesses, 
vaguenesses and other betrayals, depending on at- 
titudes, motions, expressions, a material personal- 
ity, in fine, in which a plain woman would have 
found nothing but failure; and peace therefore 
might rule the scene on every hypothesis but that of 
her getting, to put it crudely, worse. How I re- 
member saying to myself that if she didn't get bet- 
ter she surely must get worse ! — being aware that I 
referred on the one side to her occult surrender and 
on the other to its awful penalty. It became pres- 
ent to me that she possibly might recover if any- 

99 

Life. 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

thing should happen that would pull her up, turn 
her into some other channel. If, however, that 
consideration didn't detain me longer the fact may 
stand as a sign of how little I believed in any check. 
Gilbert Long might die, but not the intensity he 
had inspired. The analogy with the situation of 
the Brissendens here, I further considered, broke 
down; I at any rate rather positively welcomed the 
view that the sacrificed party to that union might 
really find the arrest of his decline, if not the renewal 
of his youth, in the loss of his wife. Would this 
lady indeed, as an effect of his death, begin to wrin- 
kle and shrivel? It would sound brutal to say that 
this was what I should have preferred to hold, were 
it not that I in fact felt forced to recognise the 
slightness of such a chance. She would have loved 
his youth, and have made it her own, in death as in 
life, and he would have quitted the world, in truth, 
only the more effectually to leave it to her. Mrs. 
Server's quandary — which was now all I cared for 
— was exactly in her own certitude of every absence 
of issue. But I need give Httle more evidence of 
how it had set me thinking. 

As much as anything else, perhaps, it was the fear 
of what one of the men might say to me that made 
me for an hour or two, at this crisis, continuously 
shy. Nobody, doubtless, would have said anything 
worse than that she was more of a flirt than ever, 
that they had all compared notes and would ac- 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

cordingly be interested in some hint of another, 
possibly a deeper, experience. It would have been 
almost as embarrassing to have to tell them how 
little experience I had had in fact as to have had to 
tell them how much I had had in fancy — all the 
more that I had as yet only my thin idea of the line 
of feeling in her that had led her so to spare me. Tea 
on the terraces represented, meanwhile, among us, 
so much neglect of everything else that my medita- 
tions remained for some time as unobserved as I 
could desire. I was not, moreover, heeding much 
where they carried me, and became aware of what 
I owed them only on at last finding myself antici- 
pated as the occupant of an arbour into which I 
had strolled. Then I saw I had reached a remote 
part of the great gardens, and that for some of my 
friends also secluded thought had inducements; 
though it was not, I hasten to add, that either of the 
pair I here encountered appeared to be striking out 
in any very original direction. Lady John and Guy 
Brissenden, in the arbour, were thinking secludedly 
together; they were together, that is, because they 
were scarce a foot apart, and they were thinking, I 
inferred, because they were doing nothing else. 
Silence, by every symptom, had definitely settled 
on them, and whatever it was I interrupted had no 
resemblance to talk. Nothing — in the general air 
of evidence — had more struck me than that what 
Lady John's famous intellect seemed to draw most 

lOI 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

from Brissenden's presence was the liberty to rest. 
Yet it shook off this languor as soon as she saw me; 
it threw itself straight into the field; it went, I could 
see, through all the motions required of it by her 
ladyship's fallacious philosophy. I could mark 
these emotions, and what determined them, as be- 
hind clear glass. 

I found, on my side, a rare intellectual joy, the 
oddest secret exultation, in feeling her begin in- 
stantly to play the part I had attributed to her in 
the irreducible drama. She broke out in a manner 
that could only have had for its purpose to repre- 
sent to me that mere weak amiability had commit- 
ted her to such a predicament. It was to humour 
her friend's husband that she had strayed so far, 
for she was somehow sorry for him, and — good 
creature as we all knew her — had, on principle, a 
kind little way of her own with silly infatuations. 
His was silly, but it was unmistakable, and she had 
for some time been finding it, in short, a case for a 
special tact. That he bored her to death I might 
have gathered by the way they sat there, and she 
could trust me to believe — couldn't she? — that she 
was only musing as to how she might most humane- 
ly get rid of him. She would lead him safely back 
to the fold if I would give her time. She seemed 
to ask it all, oddly, of me, to take me remarkably 
into her confidence, to refer me, for a specimen of 
his behaviour, to his signal abandonment of his 

I02 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

wife the day before, his having waited over, to come 
down, for the train in which poor she was to travel. 
It was at all events, I felt, one of the consequences 
of having caught on to so much that I by this time 
found myself catching on to everything. I read 
into Lady John's wonderful manner — which quite 
clamoured, moreover, for an interpretation — all that 
was implied in the lesson I had extracted from other 
portions of the business. It was distinctly poor 
she who gave me the lead, and it was not less defi- 
nite that she put it to me that I should render her 
a service either by remaining with them or by in- 
venting something that would lure her persecutor 
away. She desired him, even at the cost of her be- 
ing left alone, distracted from his pursuit. 

Poor he, in his quarter, I hasten to add, contrib- 
uted to my picking out this embroidery nothing 
more helpful than a sustained detachment. He 
said as little as possible, seemed heedless of what 
was otherw^ise said, and only gave me on his own 
account a look or two of dim suggestiveness. Yet 
it was these looks that most told with me, and 
what they, for their part, conveyed was a plea that 
directly contradicted Lady John's. I understood 
him that it was he who was bored, he who had been 
pursued, he for whom perversity had become a 
dreadful menace, he, in fine, who pleaded for my 
intervention. He was so willing to trust me to 
relieve him of his companion that I think he would 

103 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

simply have bolted without deferring to me if I had 
not taken my precautions against it. I had, as it 
happened, another momentary use for him than 
this: I wished on the one hand not to lose him 
and on the other not to lose Lady John, though I 
had quickly enough guessed this brilliant woman's 
real preference, of which it in fact soon became my 
lively wish to see the proof. The union of these 
two was too artificial for me not already to have 
connected with it the service it might render, in her 
ladyship's view, to that undetected cultivation, on 
her part, of a sentiment for Gilbert Long which, 
through his feigned response to it, fitted so com- 
pletely to the other pieces in my collection. To 
see all this was at the time, I remember, to be as 
inhumanly amused as if one had found one could 
create something. I had created nothing but a clue 
or two to the larger comprehension I still needed, 
yet I positively found myself overtaken by a mild 
artistic glow. What had occurred was that, for my 
full demonstration, I needed Long, and that, by the 
same stroke, I became sure I should certainly get 
him by temporising a little. 

Lady John was in love with him and had kicked 
up, to save her credit, the dust of a fictive relation 
with another man — the relation one of mere artifice 
and the man one in her encouragement of whom 
nobody would believe. Yet she was also discover- 
ably divided between her prudence and her vanity, 

104 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

for if it was difficult to make poor Briss figure at all 
vividly as an insistent satellite, the thankless tact 
she had to employ gave her exactly, she argued, 
the right to be refreshingly fanned with an occa- 
sional flap of the flag under which she had, as she 
ridiculously fancied, truly conquered. If she was 
where I found her because her escort had dragged 
her there, she had made the best of it through the 
hope of assistance from another quarter. She had 
held out on the possibility that Mr. Long — whom 
one could without absurdity sit in an arbour with — 
might have had some happy divination of her plight. 
He had had such divinations before — thanks to a 
condition in him that made sensibility abnormal — 
and the least a wretched woman could do when be- 
trayed by the excess of nature's bounty was to play 
admirer against admirer and be " talked about " on 
her ow^n terms. She would just this once have ad- 
mitted it, I was to gather, to be an occasion for 
pleading guilty — oh, so harmlessly! — to a con- 
sciousness of the gentleman mutely named between 
us. Well, the " proof " I just alluded to was that 
I had not sat with my friends five minutes before 
Gilbert Long turned up. 

I saw in a moment how neatly my being there 
with them played his game; I became in this fashion 
a witness for him that he could almost as little leave 
Lady John alone as — well, as other people could. 
It may perfectly have been the pleasure of this re- 

los 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

flection that again made him free and gay — pro- 
duced in him, in any case, a different shade of man- 
ner from that with which, before luncheon, as the 
consequence perhaps of a vague flair for my possi- 
ble penetration, I had suspected him of edging 
away from me. Not since my encounter with him 
at Paddington the afternoon before had I had so 
to recognise him as the transfigured talker. To 
see Lady John with him was to have little enough 
doubt of Jier recognitions, just as this spectacle also 
dotted each " i " in my conviction of his venial — I 
can only call it that — duplicity. I made up my 
mind on the spot that it had been no part of his plan 
to practise on her, and that the worst he could have 
been accused of was a good-natured acceptance, 
more apparent than real, for his own purposes, of 
her theory — which she from time to time let peep 
out — that they would have liked each other better 
if they hadn't been each, alas ! so good. He profit- 
ed by the happy accident of having pleased a per- 
son so much in evidence, and indeed it was tolera- 
bly clear to me that neither party was duped. Lady 
John didn't want a lover; this would have been, as 
people say, a larger order than, given the other 
complications of her existence, she could meet; but 
she wanted, in a high degree, the appearance of 
carrying on a passion that imposed alike fearless 
realisations and conscious renouncements, and this 
circumstance fully fell in with the convenience and 

xo6 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the special situation of her friend. Her vanity re- 
joiced, so far as she dared to let it nibble, and the 
mysteries she practised, the dissimulations she elab- 
orated, the general danger of detection in which 
she flattered herself that she publicly walked, were 
after all so much grist to the mill of that appetite. 

By just so much, however, as it could never come 
up between them that there was another woman in 
Gilbert's history, by just so much would it on the 
other hand have been an articulate axiom that as 
many of the poor Brisses of the world as she might 
care to accommodate would be welcome to figure 
in her own. This personage, under that deeper 
induction, I suddenly became aware that I also 
greatly pitied — pitied almost as much as I pitied 
Mrs. Server; and my pity had doubtless something 
to do with the fact that, after I had proposed to him 
that we should adjourn together and we had, on his 
prompt, even though slightly dry response, placed 
the invidious arbour at a certain distance, I passed 
my hand into his arm. There were things I wanted 
of him, and the first was that he should let me show 
him I could be kind to him. I had made of the 
circumstance of tea at the house a pretext for our 
leaving the others, each of whom I felt as rather 
showily calling my attention to their good old 
ground for not wishing to rejoin the crowd. As to 
what Brissenden wished I had made up my mind; 
I had made up my mind as to the subject of his 

107 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

thoughts while they wandered, during his deten- 
tion, from Lady John; and if the next of my wishes 
was to enter into his desire, I had decided on giv- 
ing it effect by the time we reached the shortest of 
the vistas at the end of which the house reared a 
brave front. 



io8 



VII 

I STAYED him there while I put it to him that 
he would probably in fact prefer to go back. 

" You're not going then yourself? " 

" No, I don't particularly want tea; and I may as 
well now confess to you that I'm taking a lonely, 
unsociable walk. I don't enjoy such occasions as 
these," I said, " unless I from time to time get ofif 
by myself somewhere long enough to tell myself 
how much I do enjoy them. That's what I was cul- 
tivating solitude for when I happened just now to 
come upon you. When I found you there with 
Lady John there was nothing for me but to make 
the best of it; but I'm glad of this chance to assure 
you that, every appearance to the contrary not- 
withstanding, I wasn't prowling about in search 
of you." 

" Well," my companion frankly replied, " I'm 
glad you turned up. I wasn't especially amusing 
myself." 

" Oh, I think I know how little ! " 

He fixed me a moment with his pathetic old face, 
and I knew more than ever that I was sorry for 
him. I was quite extraordinarily sorry, and I won- 

109 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

dered whether I mightn't without offence or indis- 
cretion really let him see it. It was to this end I 
had held him and wanted a little to keep him, and 
I was reassured as I felt him, though I had now re- 
leased him, linger instead of leaving me. I had 
made him uneasy last night, and a new reason or 
two for my doing so had possibly even since then 
come up; yet these things also would depend on the 
way he might take them. The look with which he 
at present faced me seemed to hint that he would 
take them as I hoped, and there was no curtness, 
but on the contrary the dawn of a dim sense that 
I might possibly aid him, in the tone with which he 
came half-way. " You ' know ' ? " 

" Ah," I laughed, " I know everything! " 
He didn't laugh; I hadn't seen him laugh, at 
Newmarch, once; he was continuously, portentous- 
ly grave, and I at present remembered how the 
effect of this had told for me at luncheon, contrasted 
as it was with that of Mrs. Server's desperate, ex- 
quisite levity. " You know I decidedly have too 
much of that dreadful old woman? " 

There was a sound in the question that would 
have made me, to my own sense, start, though I as 
quickly hoped I had not done so to Brissenden's. 
I couldn't have persuaded myself, however, that I 
had escaped showing him the flush of my effort to 
show nothing. I had taken his disgusted allusion 
as to Mrs. Brissenden, and the action of that was 

no 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

upsetting. But nothing, fortunately, was psycho- 
logically more interesting than to grasp the next 
moment the truth of his reference. It was only the 
fact of his himself looking so much older than Lady 
John that had blinded me for an instant to the pro- 
priety of his not thinking of her as young. She 
wasn't young as Jic had a right to call people, and 
I felt a glow — also, I feared, too visible — as soon 
as I had seen whom he meant. His meaning Lady 
John did me somehow so much good that I believed 
it would have done me still more to hear him call 
her a harridan or a Jezebel. It was none of my 
business; how Httle was anything, when it came to 
that, my business! — yet indefinably, unutterably, I 
felt assuaged for him and comforted. I verily be- 
lieve it hung in the balance a minute or two that 
in my impulse to draw him out, so that I might give 
him my sympathy, I was prepared to risk overturn- 
ing the edifice of my precautions. I luckily, as it 
happened, did nothing of the sort; I contrived to 
breathe consolingly on his secret without betraying 
an intention. There was almost no one in the place 
save two or three of the very youngest women 
whom he wouldn't have had a right to call old. 
Lady John was a hag, then; Mrs. Server herself was 
more than on the turn; Gilbert Long was fat and 
forty; and I cast about for some light in which I 
could show that I — a plus forte raison — was a panta- 
loon. " Of course you can't quite see the fun of 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

it, and it really isn't fair to you. You struck me 
as much more in your element," I ventured to add, 
" when, this morning, more than once, I chanced to 
observe you led captive by Mrs. Server." 

'' Oh, that's a different affair," he answered with 
an accent that promised a growth of confidence. 

" Mrs. Server's an old woman," I continued, " but 
she can't seem to a fellow like you as old as Lady 
John. She has at any rate more charm; though 
perhaps not," I added, '' quite so much talk." 

On this he said an extraordinary thing, which all 
but made me start again. " Oh, she hasn't any 
talk! " 

I took, as quickly as possible, refuge in a sur- 
prised demurrer. " Not atiyf " 

" None to speak of." 

I let all my wonder come. " But wasn't she chat- 
tering to you at luncheon? " It forced him to meet 
my eyes at greater length, and I could already see 
that my experiment — for insidiously and pardon- 
ably such I wished to make it — was on the way to 
succeed. I had been right then, and I knew where 
I stood. He couldn't have been " drawn " on his 
wife, and he couldn't have been drawn, in the least 
directly, on himself, but as he could thus easily be 
on Lady John, so likewise he could on other women, 
or on the particular one, at least, who mattered to 
me. I felt I really knew what I was about, for to 
draw him on Mrs. Server was in truth to draw him 

112 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

indirectly on himself. It was indeed perhaps be- 
cause I had by this time in a measure expressed, 
in terms however general, the interest with which 
he inspired me, that I now found myself free to 
shift the ground of my indiscretion. I only wanted 
him to know that on the question of Mrs. Server I 
was prepared to go as far with him as he should 
care to move. How it came to me now that he 
was the absolutely safe person in the house to talk 
of her with ! "I was too far away from you to 
hear," I had gone on; " and I could only judge of 
her flow of conversation from the animated expres- 
sion of her face. It was extraordinarily animated. 
But that, I admit," I added, " strikes one always as 
a sort of parti pris with her. She's never not ex- 
traordinarily animated." 

" She has no flow of conversation whatever," said 
Guy Brissenden. 

I considered. " Really? " 

He seemed to look at me quite without uneasiness 
now. " Why, haven't you seen for yourself ? " 

" How the case stands with her on that head? 
Do you mean haven't I talked with her? Well, 
scarcely; for it's a fact that every man in the house 
but I strikes me as having been deluged with that 
privilege : if indeed," I laughed, " her absence of 
topics suffers it to be either a privilege or a deluge ! 
She affects me, in any case, as determined to have 
nothing to do with me. She walks all the rest of 

113 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

you about; she gives you each your turn; me only 
she skips, she systematically ignores. I'm half 
consoled for it, however," I wound up, " by see- 
ing what short innings any individual of you has. 
You personally strike me as having had the long- 
est." 

Brissenden appeared to wonder where I was 
coming out, yet not as if he feared it. There was 
even a particular place, if I could but guess it, where 
he would have liked me to come. " Oh, she's ex- 
tremely charming. But of course she's strikingly 
odd." 

"Odd?— really?" 

" Why, in the sense, I mean, that I thought you 
suggested you've noticed." 

" That of extravagant vivacity? Oh, I've had 
to notice it at a distance, without knowing what it 
represents." 

He just hesitated. " You haven't any idea at all 
what it represents? " 

" How should I have," I smiled, " when she never 
comes near me? I've thought that, as I tell you, 
marked. What does her avoidance of me repre- 
sent? Has she happened, with you, to throw any 
hght on it? " 

" I think," said Brissenden after another mo- 
ment, " that she's rather afraid of you." 

I could only be surprised. " The most harmless 
man in the house? " 

114 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"Are you really?" he asked — and there was a 
touch of the comic in hearing him put it with his 
inveterate gravity. 

" If you take me for anything else," I replied, " I 
doubt if you'll find anyone to back you." 

My companion, on this, looked away for a little, 
turned about, fixed his eyes on the house, seemed, 
as with a drop of interest, on the point of leaving 
me. But instead of leaving me he brought out the 
next moment : " I don't want anyone to back me. 
I don't care. I didn't mean just now," he contin- 
ued, " that Mrs. Server has said to me anything 
against you, or that she fears you because she dis- 
likes you. She only told me she thought you 
disliked her." 

It gave me a kind of shock. " A creature so 
beautiful, and so — so " 

" So what? " he asked as I found myself checked 
by my desire to come to her aid. 

" Well, so brilliantly happy." 

I had all his attention again. " Is that what she 
isf " 

" Then don't you, with your opportunities, 
know? " I was conscious of rather an inspiration, 
a part of which was to be jocose. " What are you 
trying," I laughed, " to get out of me? " 

It struck me luckily that, though he remained as 
proof against gaiety as ever, he was, thanks to his 
preoccupation, not disagreeably affected by my 

"5 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

tone. " Of course if you've no idea, I can get noth- 
ing." 

" No idea of what? " 

Then it was that I at last got it straight. " Well, 
of what's the matter with her." 

" Is there anything particular? If there is," I 
went on, " there's something that I've got out of 
you! " 

" How so, if you don't know what it is? " 

"Do you mean if you yourself don't?" But 
without detaining him on this, " Of what in especial 
do the signs," I asked, " consist? " 

" Well, of everyone's thinking so — that there's 
something or other." 

This again struck me, but it struck me too much. 
" Oh, everyone's a fool ! " 

He saw, in his queer wan way, how it had done 
so. " Then you have your own idea? " 

I daresay my smile at him, while I waited, showed 
a discomfort. " Do you mean people are talking 
about her? " 

But he waited himself. " Haven't they shown 
you ? " 

" No, no one has spoken. Moreover I wouldn't 
have let them." 

" Then there you arc! " Brissenden exclaimed. 
" If you've kept them ofif, it must be because you 
differ with them." 

" I shan't be sure of that," I returned, " till I 
ii6 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

know what they think! However, I repeat," I 
added, " that I shouldn't even then care. I don't 
mind admitting that she much interests me." 

" There you are, there you are ! " he said again. 

" That's all that's the matter with her so far as 
I'm concerned. You see, at any rate, how little it 
need make her ah-aid of me. She's lovely and she's 
gentle and she's happy." 

My friend kept his eyes on me. " What is there 
to interest you so in that? Isn't it a description 
that applies here to a dozen other women? You 
can't say, you know, that you're interested in them, 
for you just spoke of them as so many fools." 

There was a certain surprise for me in so much 
acuteness, which, however, doubtless admonished 
me as to the need of presence of mind. " I wasn't 
thinking of the ladies — I was thinking of the men." 

" That's amiable to me," he said with his gentle 
gloom. 

" Oh, my dear Brissenden, I except ' you.' " 

" And why should you? " 

I felt a trifle pushed. " I'll tell you some other 
time. And among the ladies I except Mrs. Bris- 
senden, with whom, as you may have noticed, I've 
been having much talk." 

" And will you tell me some other time about 
that too? " On which, as I but amicably shook my 
head for no, he had his first dimness of pleasantry. 
" I'll get it then from my wife." 

117 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Never. She won't tell you." 

" She has passed you her word? That won't 
alter the fact that she tells me everything." 

He really said it in a way that made me take 
refuge for an instant in looking at my watch. " Are 
you going back to tea? If you are, I'll, in spite of 
my desire to roam, walk twenty steps with you." 
I had already again put my hand into his arm, and 
we strolled for a little till I threw off that I was sure 
Mrs. Server was waiting for him. To this he re- 
plied that if I wished to get rid of him he was as 
willing to take that as anything else for granted — 
an observation that I, on my side, answered with an 
inquiry, though an inquiry that had nothing to do 
with it. " Do you also tell everything to Mrs. Bris- 
senden? " 

It brought him up shorter than I had expected. 
" Do you ask me that in order that I shan't speak 
to her of this? " 

I showed myself at a loss. " Of ' this ' ? " 

" Why, of what we've made out " 

"About Mrs. Server, you and I? You must act 
as to that, my dear fellow, quite on your own dis- 
cretion. All the more that what on earth have we 
made out? I assure you I haven't a secret to con- 
fide to you about her, except that I've never seen a 
person more unquenchably radiant." 

He almost jumped at it. " Well, that's just it ! " 

"But just what?" 

ii8 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Why, what they're all talking about. That she 
is so awfully radiant. That she's so tremendously 
happy. It's the question," he explained, " of what 
in the world she has to make her so." 

I winced a little, but tried not to show it. " My 
dear man, how do / know? " 

" She thinks you know," he after a moment an- 
swered. 

I could only stare. " Mrs. Server thinks I know 
what makes her happy? " I the more easily repre- 
sented such a conviction as monstrous in that it 
truly had its surprise for me. 

But Brissenden now was all with his own thought. 
" She isn't happy." 

*' You mean that that's what's the matter with 

her under her appearance ? Then what makes 

the appearance so extraordinary? " 

" Why, exactly what I mention — that one doesn't 
see anything whatever in her to correspond to 
it." 

I hesitated. " Do you mean in her circum- 
stances? " 

" Yes — or in her character. Her circumstances 
are nothing wonderful. She has none too much 
money; she has had three children and lost them; 
and nobody that belongs to her appears ever to 
have been particularly nice to her." 

I turned it over. " How you do get on with 
her!" 

119 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Do you call it getting on with her to be the 
more bewildered the more I see her? " 

" Isn't to say you're bewildered only, on the 
whole, to say you're charmed? That always — 
doesn't it? — describes more or less any engrossed 
relation with a lovely lady." 

" Well, I'm not sure I'm so charmed." He 
spoke as if he had thought this particular question 
over for himself; he had his way of being lucid with- 
out brightness. " I'm not at all easily charmed, 
you know," he the next moment added; "and 
I'm not a fellow who goes about much after 
women." 

" Ah, that I never supposed ! Why in the world 
should you? It's the last thing ! " I laughed. " But 
isn't this — quite (what shall one call it?) innocently 
— rather a peculiar case? " 

My question produced in him a little gesture of 
elation — a gesture emphasised by a snap of his fore- 
finger and thumb. " I knew you knew it was spe- 
cial ! I knew you've been thinking about it ! " 

" You certainly," I replied with assurance, " have, 
during the last five minutes, made me do so with 
some sharpness. I don't pretend that I don't now 
recognise that there must be something the matter. 
I only desire — not unnaturally — that there sJwuld 
be, to put me in the right for having thought, if, as 
you're so sure, such a freedom as that can be 
brought home to me. If Mrs. Server is beautiful 

1 20 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and gentle and strange," I speciously went on, 
" what are those things but an attraction? " 

I saw how he had them, whatever they were, be- 
fore him as he slowly shook his head. " They're 
not an attraction. They're too queer." 

I caught in an instant my way to fall in with him; 
and not the less that I by this time felt myself com- 
mitted, up to the intellectual eyes, to ascertaining 
just how queer the person under discussion might 
be. " Oh, of course I'm not speaking of her as a 
party to a silly flirtation, or an object of any sort of 
trivial pursuit. But there are so many dififerent 
ways of being taken." 

" For a fellow like you. But not for a fellow 
like me. For me there's only one." 

" To be, you mean, in love? " 

He put it a little differently. " Well, to be thor- 
oughly pleased." 

" Ah, that's doubtless the best way and the firm 
ground. And you mean you're not thoroughly 
pleased with Mrs. Server? " 

" No — and yet I want to be kind to her. There- 
fore what's the matter? " 

" Oh, if it's what's the matter with you you ask 
me, that extends the question. If you want to be 
kind to her, you get on with her, as we were saying, 
quite enough for my argument. And isn't the mat- 
ter also, after all," I demanded, " that you simply 
feel she desires you to be kind? " 

121 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" She does that." And he looked at me as with 
the sense of drawing from me, for his relief, some 
greater help than I was as yet conscious of the cour- 
age to offer. " It is that she desires me. She likes 
it. And the extraordinary thing is that / like it." 

" And why in the world shouldn't you? " 

" Because she terrifies me. She has something 
to hide." 

" But, my dear man," I asked with a gaiety sin- 
gularly out of relation to the small secret thrill 
produced in me by these words — '' my dear man, 
what woman who's worth anything hasn't? " 

" Yes, but there are different ways. What she 
tries for is this false appearance of happiness." 

I weighed it. " But isn't that the best thing? " 

" It's terrible to have to keep it up." 

" Ah, but if you don't for her? If it all comes on 
herself? " 

" It doesn't," Guy Brissenden presently said. " I 
do — ' for ' her — help to keep it up." And then, still 
unexpectedly to me, came out the rest of his confes- 
sion. " I want to — I try to; that's what I mean by 
being kind to her, and by the gratitude with which 
she takes it. One feels that one doesn't want her 
to break down." 

It was on this — from the poignant touch in it — 
that I at last felt I had burnt my ships and didn't 
care how much I showed I was with him. '* Oh, 
but she won't. You must keep her going." 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

He stood a little with a thumb in each pocket of 
his trousers, and his melancholy eyes ranging far 
over my head — over the tops of the highest trees. 
" Who am / to keep people going? " 

" Why, you're just the man. Aren't you, 
happy? " 

He still ranged the tree-tops. " Yes." 

" Well, then, you belong to the useful class. 
You've the wherewithal to give. It's the happy 
people who should help the others," 

He had, in the same attitude, another pause. 
" It's easy for you to talk ! " 

" Because I'm not happy? " 

It made him bring his eyes again down to me. 
" I think you're a little so now at my expense." 

I shook my head reassuringly. " It doesn't cost 
you anything if — as I confess to it now — I do to 
some extent understand." 

" That's more, then, than — after talking of it this 
way with you — I feel that / do ! " 

He had brought that out with a sudden sigh, 
turning away to go on; so that we took a few steps 
more. " You've nothing to trouble about," I then 
freely remarked, " but that you are as kind as the 
case requires and that you do help. I daresay that 
you'll find her even now on the terrace looking out 
for you." I patted his back, as we went a little 
further, but as I still preferred to stay away from the 
house I presently stopped again. " Don't fall be- 

123 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

low your chance. Noblesse oblige. We'll pull her 
through." 

" You say * we,' " he returned, " but you do keep 
out of it ! " 

" Why should you wish me to interfere with 
you?" I asked. " I wouldn't keep out of it if she 
wanted me as much as she wants you. That, by 
your own admission, is exactly what she doesn't." 

" Well, then," said Brissenden, " I'll make her 
go for you. I think I want your assistance quite 
as much as she can want mine." 

" Oh," I protested for this, " I've really given you 
already every ounce of mine I can squeeze out. 
And you know for yourself far more than I do." 

" No, I don't ! " — with which he became quite 
sharp; " for you know Jiow you know it — which I've 
not a notion of. It's just what I think," he con- 
tinued, facing me again, " you ought to tell me." 

" I'm a little in doubt of what you're talking of, 
but I suppose you to allude to the oddity of my be- 
ing so much interested without my having been 
more informed." 

" You've got some clue," Brissenden said; " and 
a clue is what I myself want." 

" Then get it," I laughed, " from Mrs. Server! " 

He wondered. " Does she know? " 

I had still, after all, to dodge a little. " Know 
what?" 

" Why, that you've found out what she has to 
hide." 

124 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" You're perfectly free to ask her. I wonder 
even that you haven't done so yet." 

" Well," he said with the finest stroke of uncon- 
sciousness he had yet shown me — " well, I suppose 
it's because I'm afraid of her." 

" But not too much afraid," I risked suggesting, 
" to be hoping at this moment that you'll find her 
if you go back to where most of our party is gath- 
ered. You're not going for tea — you're going for 
Mrs. Server : just of whom it was, as I say, you were 
thinking while you sat there with Lady John. So 
what is it you so greatly fear? " 

It was as if I could see through his dim face a sort 
of gratitude for my making all this out to him. " I 
don't know that it's anything that she may do to 
me." He could make it out in a manner for him- 
self. " It's as if something might happen to her. 
It's what I told you — that she may break down. 
If you ask me how, or in what," he continued, 
" how can I tell you? In whatever it is that she's 
trying to do. I don't understand it." Then he 
wound up with a sigh that, in spite of its softness, 
he imperfectly stifled. " But it's something or 
other!" 

" What would it be, then," I asked, " but what 
you speak of as what I've ' found out '? The efTort 
you distinguish in her is the effort of concealment — 
vain, as I gather it strikes you both, so far as /, in 
my supernatural acuteness, am concerned." 

"5 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

Following this with the final ease to which my 
encouragement directly ministered, he yet gave me, 
before he had quite arrived, a queer sidelong glance. 
" Wouldn't it really be better if you were to tell me? 
I don't ask her myself, you see. I don't put things 
to her in that way." 

" Oh, no — I've shown you how I do see. That's 
a part of your admirable consideration. But I must 
repeat that nothing would induce me to tell you." 

His poor old face fairly pleaded. " But I want 
so to know." 

" Ah, there it is ! " I almost triumphantly 
laughed. 

" There what is? " 

" Why, everything. What I've divined, between 
you and Mrs. Server, as the tie. Your wanting so 
to know." 

I felt as if he were now, intellectually speaking, 
plastic wax in my hand. " And her wanting me 
not to?" 

" Wanting me not to," I smiled. 

He puzzled it out. " And being willing, there- 
fore " 

" That you — you only, for sympathy, for fellow- 
ship, for the wild wonder of it — should know? 
Well, for all those things, and in spite of what you 
call your fear, try her ! " With which now at last I 
quitted him. 



126 



VIII 

I'M afraid I can't quite say what, after that, I at 
first did, nor just how I immediately profited 
by our separation. I felt absurdly excited, though 
this indeed was what I had felt all day; there had 
been in fact deepening degrees of it ever since my 
first mystic throb after finding myself, the day be- 
fore in our railway-carriage, shut up to an hour's 
contemplation and collation, as it were, of Gilbert 
Long and Mrs. Brissenden. I have noted how my 
first full contact with the changed state of these as- 
sociates had caused the knell of the tranquil mind 
audibly to ring for me. I have spoken of my sharp- 
ened perception that something altogether out of 
the common had happened, independently, to each, 
and I could now certainly flatter myself that I hadn't 
missed a feature of the road I had thus been beguiled 
to travel. It was a road that had carried me far, 
and verily at this hour I felt far. I daresay that for 
a while after leaving poor Briss, after what I may 
indeed call launching him, this was what I predom- 
inantly felt. To be where I was, to whatever else 
it might lead, treated me by its help to the taste of 
success. It appeared then that the more things I 

127 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

fitted together the larger sense, every way, they 
made — a remark in which I found an extraordinary 
elation. It justified my indiscreet curiosity; it 
crowned my underhand process with beauty. The 
beauty perhaps was only for me — the beauty of hav- 
ing been right; it made at all events an element in 
which, while the long day softly dropped, I wan- 
dered and drifted and securely floated. This ele- 
ment bore me bravely up, and my private triumph 
struck me as all one with the charm of the moment 
and of the place. 

There was a general shade in all the lower reaches 
— a fine clear dusk in garden and grove, a thin suf- 
fusion of twilight out of which the greater things, 
the high tree-tops and pinnacles, the long crests of 
motionless wood and chimnied roof, rose into 
golden air. The last calls of birds sounded ex- 
traordinarily loud; they were like the timed, serious 
splashes, in wide, still water, of divers not expecting 
to rise again, I scarce know what odd conscious- 
ness I had of roaming at close of day in the grounds 
of some castle of enchantment. I had positively 
encountered nothing to compare with this since the 
days of fairy-tales and of the childish imagination 
of the impossible. TJien I used to circle round en- 
chanted castles, for then I moved in a world in 
which the strange " came true." It was the com- 
ing true that was the proof of the enchantment, 
which, moreover, was naturally never so great as 

128 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

when such coming was, to such a degree and by the 
most romantic stroke of all, the fruit of one's own 
wizardry. I was positively — so had the wheel re- 
volved — proud of my work. I had thought it all 
out, and to have thought it was, wonderfully, to 
have brought it. Yet I recall how I even then 
knew on the spot that there was something supreme 
I should have failed to bring unless I had happened 
suddenly to become aware of the very presence of 
the haunting principle, as it were, of my thought. 
This was the light in which Mrs. Server, walking 
alone now, apparently, in the grey wood and paus- 
ing at sight of me, showed herself in her clear dress 
at the end of a vista. It was exactly as if she had 
been there by the operation of my intelligence, or 
even by that — in a still happier way — of my feeling. 
My excitement, as I have called it, on seeing her, 
was assuredly emotion. Yet what zuas this feeling, 
really? — of which, at the point we had thus reached, 
I seemed to myself to have gathered from all things 
an invitation to render some account. 

Well, I knew within the minute that I was moved 
by it as by an extraordinary tenderness; so that this' 
is the name I must leave it to make the best of. It 
had already been my impression that I was sorry for 
her, but it was marked for me now that I was 
sorrier than I had reckoned. All her story seemed 
at once to look at me out of the fact of her present 
lonely prowl. I met it without demur, only want- 

129 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ing her to know that if I struck her as waylaying 
her in the wood, as waiting for her there at eventide 
with an idea, I shouldn't in the least defend myself 
from the charge. I can scarce clearly tell how 
many fine strange things I thought of during this 
brief crisis of her hesitation. I wanted in the first 
place to make it end, and while I moved a few steps 
toward her I felt almost as noiseless and guarded 
as if I were trapping a bird or stalking a fawn. My 
few steps brought me to a spot where another per- 
spective crossed our own, so that they made to- 
gether a verdurous circle with an evening sky above 
and great lengthening, arching recesses in which 
the twilight thickened. Oh, it was quite suf^cient- 
ly the castle of enchantment, and when I noticed 
four old stone seats, massive and mossy and sym- 
metrically placed, I recognised not only the influ- 
ence, in my adventure, of the grand style, but the 
familiar identity of this consecrated nook, which 
was so much of the type of all the bemused and 
remembered. We were in a beautiful old picture, 
we were in a beautiful old tale, and it wouldn't be 
the fault of Newmarch if some other green carre- 
four, not far off, didn't balance with this one and 
offer the alternative of niches, in the greenness, oc- 
cupied by weather-stained statues on florid pedes- 
tals. 

I sat straight down on the nearest of our benches, 
for this struck me as the best way to express the 

130 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

conception with which the sight of Mrs. Server filled 
me. It showed her that if I watched her I also 
waited for her, and that I was therefore not affected 
in any manner she really need deprecate. She had 
been too far ofif for me to distinguish her face, but 
her approach had faltered long enough to let me 
see that if she had not taken it as too late she would, 
to escape me, have found some pretext for turning 
ofif. It was just my seating myself that made the 
difference — it was my being s-o simple with her that 
brought her on. She came slowly and a little wear- 
ily down the vista, and her sad, shy advance, with 
the massed wood on either side of her, was like the 
reminiscence of a picture or the refrain of a ballad. 
What made the difference with me — if any differ- 
ence had remained to be made — was the sense of 
this sharp cessation of her public extravagance. 
She had folded up her manner in her flounced para- 
sol, which she seemed to drag after her as a sorry 
soldier his musket. It was present to me without 
a pang that this was the person I had sent poor 
Briss off to find — the person poor Briss would owe 
me so few thanks for his failure to have found. It 
was equally marked to me that, however detached 
and casual she might, at the first sight of me, have 
wished to show herself, it was to alight on poor 
Briss that she had come out, it was because he had 
not been at the house and might therefore, on his 
side, be wandering, that she had taken care to be 

131 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

unaccompanied. My demonstration was complete 
from the moment I thus had them in the act of seek- 
ing each other, and I was so pleased at having gath- 
ered them in that I cared little what else they had 
missed. I neither moved nor spoke till she had 
come quite near me, and as she also gave no sound 
the meaning of our silence seemed to stare straight 
out. It absolutely phrased there, in all the won- 
derful conditions, a relation already established; but 
the strange and beautiful thing was that as soon as 
we had recognised and accepted it this relation put 
us almost at our ease. " You must be weary of 
walking," I said at last, " and you see I've been 
keeping a seat for you." 

I had finally got up, as a sign of welcome, but I 
had directly afterwards resumed my position, and 
it was an illustration of the terms on which we 
met that we neither of us seemed to mind her 
being meanwhile on her feet. She stood before 
me as if to take in — with her smile that had by 
this time sunk quite to dimness — more than we 
should, either of us, after all, be likely to be able 
to say. I even saw from this moment, I think, that, 
whatever she might understand, she would be able 
herself to say but little. She gave herself, in that 
minute, more than she doubtless knew — gave 
herself, I mean, to my intenser apprehension. 
She went through the form of expression, but 
what told me everything was the way the form of 

132 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

expression broke down. Her lovely grimace, the 
light of the previous hours, was as blurred as a 
bit of brushwork in water-colour spoiled by the up- 
setting of the artist's glass. She fixed me with it as 
she had fixed during the day forty persons, but it 
fluttered Hke a bird with a broken wing. She 
looked about and above, down each of our dusky 
avenues and up at our gilded tree-tops and our 
painted sky, where, at the moment, the passage of a 
flight of rooks made a clamour. She appeared to 
wish to produce some explanation of her solitude, 
but I was quickly enough sure that she would never 
find a presentable one. I only wanted to show her 
how little I required it. " I like a lonely walk," I 
went on, " at the end of a day full of people : it's 
always, to me, on such occasions, quite as if some- 
thing has happened that the mind wants to catch 
and fix before the vividness fades. So I mope by 
myself an hour — I take stock of my impressions. 
But there's one thing I don't believe you know. 
This is the very first time, in such a place and at 
such an hour, that it has ever befallen me to come 
across a friend stricken with the same perversity 
and engaged in the same pursuit. Most people, 
don't you see? " — I kept it up as I could — " don't 
in the least know what has happened to them, and 
don't care to know. That's one way, and I don't 
deny it may be practically the best. But if one does 
care to know, that's another way. As soon as I saw 

133 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

you there at the end of the alley I said to myself, 
with quite a Httle thrill of elation, ' Ah, then it's her 
way too ! ' I wonder if you'll let me tell you," I 
floundered pleasantly on, " that I immediately liked 
you the better for it. It seemed to bring us more 
together. That's what I sat straight down here to 
show you. ' Yes,' I wished you to understand me 
as frankly saying, ' I am, as well as you, on the mope, 
or on the muse, or on whatever you call it, and this 
isn't half a bad corner for such a mood.' I can't tell 
you what a pleasure it is to me to see you do under- 
stand." 

I kept it up, as I say, to reassure and soothe and 
steady her; there was nothing, however fantastic 
and born of the pressure of the moment, that I 
wouldn't have risked for that purpose. She was ab- 
solutely on my hands with her secret — I felt that 
from the way she stood and listened to me, silently 
showing herself relieved and pacified. It was 
marked that if I had hitherto seen her as " all over 
the place," she had yet nowhere seemed to me less 
so than at this furthermost point. But if, though 
only nearer to her secret and still not in possession, 
I felt as justified as I have already described myself, 
so it equally came to me that I was quite near 
enough, at the pass we had reached, for what I 
should have to take from it all. She was on my 
hands — it was she herself, poor creature, who was : 
this was the thing that just now loomed large, and 

134 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the secret was a comparative detail. " I think 
you're very kind," she said for all answer to the 
speech I have reported, and the minute after this 
she had sunk down, in confessed collapse, to my 
bench, on which she sat and stared before her. The 
mere mechanism of her expression, the dangling 
paper lantern itself, was now all that was left in her 
face. She remained a little as if discouraged by the 
sight of the weariness that her surrender had let 
out. I hesitated, from just this fear of adding to 
it, to commiserate her for it more directly, and she 
spoke again before I had found anything to say. 
She brought back her attention indeed as if with an 
effort and from a distance. " What is it that has 
happened to you? " 

" Oh," I laughed, " what is it that has happened 
to youf " My question had not been in the least 
intended for pressure, but it made her turn and look 
at me, and this, I quickly recognised, was all the 
answer the most pitiless curiosity could have desired 
— all the more, as well, that the intention in it had 
been no greater than in my words. Beautiful, 
abysmal, involuntary, her exquisite weakness sim- 
ply opened up the depths it would have closed. It 
was in short a supremely unsuccessful attempt to 
say nothing. It said everything, and by the end of 
a minute my chatter — none the less out of place for 
being all audible — was hushed to positive awe by 
what it had conveyed. I saw as I had never seen 

135 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

before what consuming passion can make of the 
marked mortal on whom, with fixed beak and claws, 
it has settled as on a prey. She reminded me of 
a sponge wrung dry and with fine pores agape. 
Voided and scraped of everything, her shell was 
merely crushable. So it was brought home to me 
that the victim could be abased, and so it disen- 
gaged itself from these things that the abasement 
could be conscious. That was Mrs. Server's trag- 
edy, that her consciousness survived — survived with 
a force that made it struggle and dissemble. This 
consciousness was all her secret — it was at any rate 
all mine. I promised myself roundly that I would 
henceforth keep clear of any other. 

I none the less — from simply sitting with her 
there — gathered in the sense of more things than 
I could have named, each of which, as it came to 
me, made my compassion more tender. Who of us 
all could say that his fall might not be as deep? — 
or might not at least become so with equal oppor- 
tunity. I for a while fairly forgot Mrs. Server, I 
fear, in the intimacy of this vision of the possibilities 
of our common nature. She became such a wasted 
and dishonoured symbol of them as might have put 
tears in one's eyes. When I presently returned to 
her — our session seeming to resolve itself into a 
mere mildness of silence — I saw how it was that 
whereas, in such cases in general, people might have 
given up much, the sort of person this poor lady 

136 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

was could only give up everything. She was the 
absolute wreck of her storm, accordingly, but to 
which the pale ghost of a special sensibility still 
clung, waving from the mast, with a bravery that 
went to the heart, the last tatter of its flag. There 
are impressions too fine for words, and I shall not 
attempt to say how it was that under the touch of 
this one I felt how nothing that concerned my com- 
panion could ever again be present to me but the 
fact itself of her admirable state. This was the 
source of her wan little glory, constituted even for 
her a small sublimity in the light of which mere 
minor identifications turned vulgar. I knew who 
he was now with a vengeance, because I had learnt 
precisely from that who she was; and nothing could 
have been sharper than the force with which it 
pressed upon me that I had really learnt more than 
I had bargained for. Nothing need have happened 
if I hadn't been so absurdly, so fatally meditative 
about poor Long — an accident that most people, 
wiser people, appeared on the whole to have steered 
sulTficiently clear of. Compared with my actual 
sense, the sense with which I sat there, that other 
vision was gross, and grosser still the connection 
between the two. 

Such were some of the reflections in which I in- 
dulged while her eyes — with their strange intermis- 
sions of darkness or of light: who could say which? 
— told me from time to time that she knew whatever 

137 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I was thinking of to be for her virtual advantage. 
It was prodigious what, in the way of suppressed 
communication, passed in these wonderful minutes 
between us. Our relation could be at the best but 
an equal confession, and I remember saying to my- 
self that if she had been as subtle as I — which she 
wasn't ! — she too would have put it together that I 
had dreadfully talked about her. She would have 
traced in me my demonstration to Mrs. Briss that, 
whoever she was, she must logically have been 
idiotised. It was the special poignancy of her col- 
lapse that, so far at least as 1 was concerned, this was 
a ravage the extent of which she had ceased to try to 
conceal. She had been trying, and more or less 
succeeding, all day: the little drama of her public 
unrest had had, when one came to consider, no 
other argument. It had been terror that had di- 
rected her steps; the need constantly to show her- 
self detached and free, followed by the sterner one 
not to show herself, by the same token, limp and 
empty. This had been the distinct, ferocious logic 
of her renewals and ruptures — the anxious mistrust 
of her wit, the haunting knowledge of the small dis- 
tance it would take her at once, the consequent im- 
portance of her exactly timing herself, and the 
quick instinct of flight before the menace of discov- 
ery. She couldn't let society alone, because that 
would have constituted a symptom; yet. for fear of 
the appearance of a worse one, she could only min- 

138 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

gle in it with a complex diplomacy. She was ac- 
cordingly exposed on every side, and to be with 
her a while thus quietly was to read back into her 
behaviour the whole explanation, which was posi- 
tively simple to me now. To take up again the 
vivid analogy, she had been sailing all day, though 
scarce able to keep afloat, under the flag of her old 
reputation for easy response. She had given to the 
breeze any sad scrap of a substitute for the play of 
mind once supposed remarkable. The last of all 
the things her stillness said to me was that I could 
judge from so poor a show what had become of her 
conversability. What I did judge was that a frantic 
art had indeed been required to make her pretty 
silences pass, from one crisis to another, for pretty 
speeches. Half this art, doubtless, was the glitter- 
ing deceit of her smile, the sublime, pathetic over- 
done geniality which represented so her share in 
any talk that, every other eloquence failing, there 
could only be nothing at all from the moment it 
abandoned its ofifice. There was nothing at all. 
That was the truth; in accordance with which I 
finally — for everything it might mean to myself — 
put out my hand and bore ever so gently on her 
own. Her own rested listlessly on the stone of our 
seat. Of course, it had been an immense thing for 
her that she was, in spite of everything, so lovely. 

All this was quite consistent with its eventually 
coming back to me that, though she took from me 

139 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

with appreciation what was expressed in the gesture 
I have noted, it was certainly in quest of a still 
deeper relief that she had again come forth. The 
more I considered her face — and most of all, so per- 
mittedly, in her passive, conscious presence — the 
more I was sure of this and the further I could go 
in the imagination of her beautiful duplicity. I 
ended by divining that if I was assuredly good for 
her, because the question of keeping up with me 
had so completely dropped, and if the service I so 
rendered her was not less distinct to her than to 
myself — I ended by divining that she had none the 
less her obscure vision of a still softer ease. Guy 
Brissenden had become in these few hours her posi- 
tive need — a still greater need than I had lately 
amused myself with making out that he had found 
her. Each had, by their unprecedented plight, 
something for the other, some intimacy of unspeak- 
able confidence, that no one else in the world could 
have for either. They had been feeling their way 
to it, but at the end of their fitful day they had grown 
confusedly, yet beneficently sure. The explanation 
here again was simple — they had the sense of a com- 
mon fate. They hadn't to name it or to phrase it — 
possibly even couldn't had they tried; peace and 
support came to them, without that, in the simple 
revelation of each other. Oh, how I made it out 
that if it was indeed very well for the poor lady to 
feel thus in my company that her burden was lifted, 

140 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

my company would be after all but a rough substi- 
tute for Guy's! He was a still better friend, little 
as he could have told the reason; and if I could in 
this connection have put the words into her mouth, 
here follows something of the sense that I should 
have made them form. 

" Yes, my dear man, I do understand you — quite 
perfectly now, and (by I know not what miracle) 
I've really done so to some extent from the first. 
Deep is the rest of feehng with you, in this way, 
that I'm watched, for the time, only as you watch 
me. It has all stopped, and / can stop. How can 
I make you understand what it is for me that there 
isn't at last a creature any more in sight, that the 
wood darkens about me, that the sounds drop and 
the relief goes on; what can it mean for you even 
that I've given myself up to not caring whether or 
no, amongst others, I'm missed and spoken of? It 
does help my strange case, in fine, as you see, to 
let you keep me here; but I should have found still 
more what I was in need of if I had only found, in- 
stead of you, him whom I had in mind. He is as 
much better than you as you are than everyone 
else." I finally felt, in a word, so qualified to attrib- 
ute to my companion some such mute address as 
that, that it could only have, as the next conse- 
quence, a determining effect on me — an effect 
under the influence of which I spoke. " I parted 
with him, some way from here, some time ago. I 

141 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

had found him in one of the gardens with Lady 
John ; after which we came away from her together. 
We strolled a little and talked, but I knew what he 
really wanted. He wanted to find you, and I told 
him he would probably do so at tea on the terrace. 
It was visibly with that idea — to return to the house 
— that he left me." 

She looked at me for some time on this, taking 
it in, yet still afraid of it. " You found him with 
Lady John? " she at last asked, and with a note in 
her voice that made me see what — as there was a 
precaution I had neglected — she feared. 

The perception of this, in its turn, operated with 
me for an instant almost as the rarest of temptations. 
I had puzzled out everything and put everything to- 
gether; I was as morally confident and as intellect- 
ually triumphant as I have frankly here described 
myself; but there was no objective test to which I 
had yet exposed my theory. The chance to apply 
one — and it would be infallible — had suddenly 
cropped up. There would be excitement, amuse- 
ment, discernment in it; it would be indeed but a 
more roundabout expression of interest and sym- 
pathy. It would, above all, pack the question I had 
for so many hours been occupied with into the com- 
pass of a needle-point. I was dazzled by my op- 
portunity. She had had an uncertainty, in other 
words, as to whom I meant, and that it kept her for 
some seconds on the rack was a trifle compared to 

142 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

my chance. She would give herself away supreme- 
ly if she showed she suspected me of placing my 
finger on the spot — if she understood the person I 
had not named to be nameable as Gilbert Long. 
What had created her peril, of course, was my nam- 
ing Lady John. Well, how can I say in any suffi- 
cient way how much the extraordinary beauty of 
her eyes during this brevity of suspense had to do 
with the event? It had everything — for it was 
what caused me to be touched beyond even what I 
had already been, and I could literally bear no more 
of that. I therefore took no advantage, or took 
only the advantage I had spoken with the intention 
of taking. I laughed out doubtless too nervously, 
but it didn't compromise my tact. " Don't you 
know how she's perpetually pouncing on him? " 

Still, however, I had not named him — which was 
what prolonged the tension. " Do you mean — a — 

do you mean ? " With which she broke oiT on 

a small weak titter and a still weaker exclamation. 
" There are so many gentlemen ! " 

There was something in it that might in other 
conditions have been as trivial as the giggle of a 
housemaid; but it had in fact for my ear the silver 
ring of poetry. I told her instantly whom I meant. 
" Poor Briss, you know," I said, " is always in her 
clutches." 

Oh, how it let her ofif ! And yet, no sooner had 
it done so and had I thereby tasted on the instant the 

143 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

sweetness of my wisdom, than I became aware of 
something much more extraordinary. It let her of¥ 
— she showed me this for a minute, in spite of her- 
self; but the next minute she showed me something 
quite different, which was, most wonderful of all, 
that she wished me to see her as not quite feeling 
why I should so much take for granted the person 
I had named. " Poor Briss? " her face and manner 
appeared suddenly to repeat — quite, moreover (and 
it was the drollest, saddest part), as if all our friends 
had stood about us to listen. Wherein did poor 
Briss so intimately concern her? What, pray, was 
my ground for such free reference to poor Briss? 
She quite repudiated poor Briss. She knew noth- 
ing at all about him, and the whole airy structure 
I had erected with his aid might have crumbled at 
the touch she thus administered if its solidity had 
depended only on that. I had a minute of surprise 
which, had it lasted another minute as surprise pure 
and simple, might almost as quickly have turned to 
something like chagrin. Fortunately it turned in- 
stead into something even more like enthusiasm 
than anything I had yet felt. The stroke zvas ex- 
traordinary, but extraordinary for its nobleness. I 
quickly saw in it, from the moment I had got my 
point of view, more fine things than ever. I saw 
for instance that, magnificently, she washed net to 
incriminate him. All that had passed between us 
had passed in silence, but it was a different matter 

144 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

for what might pass in sound. We looked at each 
other therefore with a strained smile over any ques- 
tion of identities. It was as if it had been one 
thing — to her confused, relaxed intensity — to give 
herself up to me, but quite another thing to give up 
somebody else. 

And yet, superficially arrested as I was for the 
time, I directly afterwards recognised in this instinc- 
tive discrimination — the last, the expiring struggle 
of her native lucidity — a supremely convincing bit 
of evidence. It was still more convincing than if she 
had done any of the common things — stammered, 
changed colour, shown an apprehension of what the 
person named might have said to me. She had had 
it from me that he and I had talked about her, but 
there was nothing that she accepted the idea of his 
having been able to say. I saw — still more than 
this — that there was nothing to my purpose (since 
my purpose was to understand) that she would have 
had, as matters stood, coherence enough to impute 
to him. It was extremely curious to me to divine, 
just here, that she hadn't a glimmering of the real 
Jogic of Brissenden's happy effect on her nerves. 
It was the effect, as coming from him, that a beauti- 
ful delicacy forbade her as yet to give me her word 
for; and she was certainly herself in the stage of 
regarding it as an anomaly. Why, on the contrary, 
I might have wondered, shouldn't she have jumped 
at the chance, at the comfort, of seeing a preference 

M5 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

trivial enough to be " worked " imputed to her? 
Why shouldn't she have been positively pleased that 
people might helpfully couple her name with that 
of the wrong man? Why, in short, in the lan- 
guage that Grace Brissenden and I had used to- 
gether, was not that lady's husband the perfection 
of a red herring? Just because, I perceived, the re- 
lation that had established itself between them zvas, 
for its function, a real relation, the relation of a fel- 
lowship in resistance to doom. 

Nothing could have been stranger than for me so 
to know it was while the stricken parties themselves 
were in ignorance; but nothing, at the same time, 
could have been, as I have since made out, more 
magnanimous than Mrs. Server's attitude. She 
moved, groping and panting, in the gathering dusk 
of her fate, but there were calculations she still could 
dimly make. One of these was that she must drag 
no one else in. I verily believe that, for that mat- 
ter, she had scruples, poignant and exquisite, even 
about letting our friend himself see how much she 
liked to be with him. She wouldn't, at all events, 
let another see. I saw what I saw, I felt what I felt, 
but such things were exactly a sign that I could 
take care of myself. There was apparently, I was 
obliged to admit, but little apprehension in her of 
her unduly showing that our meeting had been any- 
thing of a blessing to her. There was no one in- 
deed just then to be the wiser for it; I might perhaps 

146 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

else even have feared that she would have been in- 
iluenced to treat the incident as closed. I had, for 
that matter, no wish to prolong it beyond her own 
convenience; it had already told me everything it 
could possibly tell. I thought I knew moreover 
what she would have got from it. I preferred, none 
the less, that we should separate by my own act; I 
wanted not to see her move in order to be free of 
me. So I stood up, to put her more at her ease, 
and it was while I remained before her that I tried 
to turn to her advantage what I had committed 
myself to about Brissenden. 

" I had a fancy, at any rate, that he was looking 
for you — all the more that he didn't deny it." 

She had not moved; she had let me take my hand 
from her own with as little sign as on her first feel- 
ing its touch. She only kept her eyes on me. 
" What made you have such a fancy? " 

" What makes me ever have any? " I laughed. 
" My extraordinary interest in my fellow-creatures. 
I have more than most men. I've never really seen 
anyone with half so much. That breeds observa- 
tion, and observation breeds ideas. Do you know 
what it has done? " I continued. '* It has bred 
for me the idea that Brissenden's in love with 
you." 

There was something in her eyes that struck me 
as betraying — and the appeal of it went to the heart 
— the constant dread that if entangled in talk she 

147 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

might show confusion. Nevertheless she brought 
out after a moment, as naturally and charmingly as 
possible: "How can that be when he's so strik- 
ingly in love with his wife? " 

I gave her the benefit of the most apparent con- 
sideration. " Strikingly, you call it? " 

" Why, I thought it was noticed — what he does 
for her." 

" Well, of course she's extremely handsome — or 
at least extremely fresh and attractive. He is in 
love with her, no doubt, if you take it by the quarter, 
or by the year, Hke a yacht or a stable," I pushed on 
at random. " But isn't there such a state also as 
being in love by the day? " 

She waited, and I guessed from the manner of it 
exactly why. It was the most obscure of intima- 
tions that she would have liked better that I 
shouldn't make her talk; but obscurity, by this time, 
offered me no more difficulties. The hint, none the 
less, a trifle disconcerted me, and, while I vaguely 
sought for some small provisional middle way be- 
tween going and not going on, the oddest thing, as 
a fruit of my own delay, occurred. This was neither 
more nor less than the revival of her terrible little 
fixed smile. It came back as if with an audible 
click — as a gas-burner makes a pop when you light 
it. It told me visibly that from the moment she 
must talk she could talk only with its aid. The 
effect of its aid I indeed immediately perceived. 

148 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"How do I know?" she asked in answer to my 
question. '* I've never been in love." 

" Not even by the day? " 

" Oh, a day's surely a long time." 

" It is," I returned. " But I've none the less, 
more fortunately than you, been in love for a whole 
one." Then I continued, from an impulse of which 
I had just become conscious and that was clear- 
ly the result of the heart-breaking facial contortion 
— heart-breaking, that is, when one knew what I 
knew — by which she imagined herself to represent 
the pleasant give-and-take of society. This sense, 
for me, was a quick horror of forcing her, in such 
conditions, to talk at all. Poor Briss had men- 
tioned to me, as an incident of his contact with her, 
his apprehension of her breaking down; and now, 
at a touch, I saw what he had meant. She zuould 
break down if I didn't look out. I found myself 
thus, from one minute to the other, as greatly dread- 
ing it for her, dreading it indeed for both of us, as 
I might have dreaded some physical accident or 
danger, her fall from an unmanageable horse or the 
crack beneath her of thin ice. It was impossible — 
that was the extraordinary impression — to come 
too much to her assistance. We had each of us all, 
in our w^ay, hour after hour, been, as goodnaturedly 
as unwittingly, giving her a lift; yet what was the 
end of it but her still sitting there to assure me of a 
state of gratitude — that she couldn't even articu- 

149 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

late — for every hint of a perch that might still be 
held out? What could only, therefore, in the con- 
nection, strike me as indicated was fairly to put into 
her mouth — if orke might do so without showing 
too ungracefully as alarmed — the words one might 
have guessed her to wish to use were she able to use 
any. It was a small service of anticipation that I 
tried to render her with as little of an air as possible 
of being remedial. " I daresay you wonder," I re- 
marked on these lines, " why, at all, I should have 
thrust Brissenden in." 

" Oh, I do so wonder! " she replied with the re- 
fined but exaggerated glee that is a frequent form 
in high companies and light colloquies. I did help 
her — it was admirable to feel it. She liked my im- 
posing on her no more complex a proposition. She 
Hked my putting the thing to her so much better 
than she could have put it to me. But she immedi- 
ately aftenvards looked away as if — now that we 
had put it, and it didn't matter which of us best — 
we had nothing more to do with it. She gave m€ 
a hint of drops and inconsequences that might in- 
deed have opened up abysses, and all the while she 
smiled and smiled. Yet whatever she did or failed 
of, as I even then observed to myself, how she re- 
mained lovely ! One's pleasure in that helped one 
somehow not to break down on one's own side 
— since breaking down was in question — for com- 
miseration. I didn't know what she might have 

^50 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

hours of for the man — whoever he was — to whom 
her sacrifice had been made; but I doubted if for 
any other person she had ever been so beautiful as 
she was for me at these moments. To have kept 
her so, to have made her more so — how might that 
result of their relation not in fact have shone as a 
blinding light into the eyes of her lover? What 
would he have been bound to make out in her after 
all but her passion and her beauty? Wasn't it 
enough for such wonders as these to fill his con- 
sciousness? If they didn't fill mine — even though 
occupying so large a place in it — was that not only 
because I had not the direct benefit of them as the 
other party to the prodigy had it? They filled mine 
too, for that matter, just at this juncture, long 
enough for me to describe myself as rendered sub- 
ject by them to a temporary loss of my thread. 
What could pass muster with her as an account of 
my reason for evoking the blighted identity of our 
friend? There came constantly into her aspect, I 
should say, the strangest alternatives, as I can only 
most conveniently call them, of presence and ab- 
sence — something like intermissions of intensity, 
cessations and resumptions of life. They were like 
the slow flickers of a troubled flame, breathed upon 
and then left, burning up and burning down. She 
had really burnt down — I mean so far as her sense 
of things went — while I stood there. 

I stood long enough to see that it didn't in the 
151 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

least signify whether or no I explained, and during 
this interval I found myself — to my surprise — in 
receipt of still better assistance than any I had to 
give. I had happened to turn, while I awkwardly 
enough, no doubt, rested and shifted, to the quarter 
from which Mrs. Server had arrived; and there, just 
at the end of the same vista, I gathered material for 
my proper reply. Her eyes at this moment were 
fixed elsewhere, and that gave me still a little more 
time, at the end of which my reference had all its 
point. '* I supposed you to have Brissenden in 
your head," I said, " because it's evidently what he 
himself takes for granted. But let him tell you ! " 
He was already close to us: missing her at the 
house, he had started again in search of her and 
had successfully followed. The efifect on him of 
coming in sight of us had been for an instant to 
make him hang back as I had seen Mrs. Server 
hang. But he had then advanced just as she had 
done; I had waited for him to reach us; and now 
she saw him. She looked at him as she always 
looked at all of us, yet not at either of us as if we 
had lately been talking of him. If it was vacancy 
it was eloquent; if it was vigilance it was splendid. 
What was most curious, at all events, was that it 
was now poor Briss who was disconcerted. He 
had counted on finding her, but not on finding her 
with me, and I interpreted a certain ruefulness in 
him as the sign of a quick, uneasy sense that he 

152 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

must have been in question between us. I instant- 
ly felt that the right thing was to let him know he 
had been, and I mentioned to him, as a joke, that 
he had come just in time to save himself. We had 
been talking of him, and I wouldn't answer for what 
Mrs. Server had been going to say. He took it 
gravely, but he took everything so gravely that I 
saw no symptom in that. In fact, as he appeared 
at first careful not to meet my eyes, I saw for a min- 
ute or two no symptom in anything — in anything, 
at least, but the way in which, standing beside me 
and before Mrs. Server's bench, he received the con- 
scious glare of her recognition without returning 
it and without indeed giving her a look. He 
looked all about — looked, as she herself had done 
after our meeting, at the charming place and its 
marks of the hour, at the rich twilight, deeper now 
in the avenues, and at the tree-tops and sky, more 
flushed now with colour. I found myself of a sud- 
den quite as sorry for him as I had been for Mrs. 
Server, and I scarce know how it was suggested 
to me that during the short interval since our sep- 
aration something had happened that made a differ- 
ence in him. Was the difference a consciousness 
still more charged than I had left it? I couldn't 
exactly say, and the question really lost itself in 
what soon came uppermost for me — the desire, 
above all, to spare them both and to spare them 
equally. 

153 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

The difficulty, however, was to spare them in 
some fashion that would not be more marked than 
continuing to observe them. To leave them to- 
gether without a decent pretext would be marked; 
but this, I eagerly recognised, was none the less 
what most concerned me. Whatever they might 
see in it, there was by this time little enough doubt 
of how it w^ould indicate for my own mind that the 
wheel had completely turned. That was the point 
to which I had been brought by the lapse of a few 
hours. I had verily travelled far since the sight 
of the pair on the terrace had given its arrest to 
my first talk with Mrs. Briss. I was obliged to ad- 
mit to myself that nothing could very well have 
been more singular than some of my sequences. I 
had come round to the opposite pole of the protest 
my companion had then drawn from me — which 
was the pole of agreement with herself; and it hung 
sharply before me that I was pledged to confess to 
her my revolution. I couldn't now be in the pres- 
ence of the two creatures I was in the very act of 
finally judging to be not a whit less stricken than 
I had originally imagined them — I couldn't do this 
and think with any complacency of the redemption 
of my pledge; for the process by which I had at last 
definitely inculpated Mrs. Server was precisely such 
a process of providential supervision as made me 
morally responsible, so to speak, for her, and there- 
by intensified my scruples. Well, my scruples had 

154 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the last word — they were what determined me to 
look at my watch and profess that, whatever sense 
of a margin Brissenden and Mrs. Server might still 
enjoy, it behoved me not to forget that I took, on 
such great occasions, an hour to dress for dinner. 
It was a fairly crude cover for my retreat; perhaps 
indeed I should rather say that my retreat was prac- 
tically naked and unadorned. It formulated their 
relation. I left them with the formula on their 
hands, both queerly staring at it, both uncertain 
what to do with it. For some passage that would 
soon be a correction of this, however, one might 
surely feel that one could trust them. I seemed to 
feel my trust justified, behind my back, before I had 
got twenty yards away. By the time I had done 
this, I must add, something further had befallen me. 
Poor Briss had met my eyes just previous to my 
flight, and it was then I satisfied myself of what had 
happened to him at the house. He had met his 
wife; she had in some way dealt with him; he had 
been with her, however briefly, alone; and the in- 
timacy of their union had been afresh impressed 
upon him. Poor Briss, in fine, looked ten years 
older. 



155 



IX 



I SHALL never forget the impressions of that 
evening, nor the way, in particular, the im- 
mediate effect of some of them was to merge the 
light of my extravagant perceptions in a glamour 
much more diffused. I remember feeling seriously 
warned, while dinner lasted, not to yield further to 
my idle habit of reading into mere human things 
an interest so much deeper than mere human things 
were in general prepared to supply. This especial 
hour, at Newmarch, had always a splendour that 
asked httle of interpretation, that even carried itself, 
with an amiable arrogance, as indifferent to what 
the imagination could do for it. I think the imagi- 
nation, in those halls of art and fortune, was almost 
inevitably accounted a poor matter; the whole place 
and its participants abounded so in pleasantness 
and picture, in all the felicities, for every sense, taken 
for granted there by the very basis of life, that even 
the sense most finely poetic, aspiring to extract the 
moral, could scarce have helped feeling itself treated 
to something of the snub that affects — when it does 
affect — the uninvited reporter in whose face a door 
is closed. I said to myself during dinner that these 

156 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

were scenes in which a transcendent intelHgence 
had after all no application, and that, in short, any- 
preposterous acuteness might easily suffer among 
them such a loss of dignity as overtakes the news- 
paper-man kicked out. We existed, all of us to- 
gether, to be handsome and happy, to be really 
what we looked — since we looked tremendously 
well; to be that and neither more nor less, so not 
discrediting by musty secrets and aggressive doubts 
our high privilege of harmony and taste. We were 
concerned only with what was bright and open, and 
the expression that became us all was, at worst, that 
of the shaded but gratified eye, the air of being for- 
givingly dazzled by too much lustre. 

Mrs. Server, at table, was out of my range, but 
I wondered if, had she not been so, I shouldn't now 
have been moved to recognise in her fixed expres- 
siveness nothing miore than our common reciprocal 
tribute. Hadn't everyone my eyes could at present 
take in a fixed expressiveness? Was I not very 
possibly myself, on this ground of physiognomic 
congruity, more physiognomic than anyone else? 
I made my excellence, on the chance, go as far as 
it would to cover my temporary doubts. I saw 
Mrs. Brissenden, in another frock, naturally, and 
other jewels from those of the evening before; but 
she gave me, across the board, no more of a look 
than if she had quite done with me. It struck me 
that she felt she had done — that, as to the subject 

157 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

of our discussion, she deemed her case by this time 
so established as to offer comparatively little inter- 
est, I couldn't come to her to renew the discus- 
sion; I could only come to her to make my submis- 
sion; and it doubtless appeared to her — to do her 
justice — more delicate not to triumph over me in 
advance. The profession of joy, however, reigned 
in her handsome face none the less largely for my 
not having the benefit of it. If I seem to falsify 
my generalisation by acknowledging that her hus- 
band, on the same side, made no more public pro- 
fession of joy than usual, I am still justified by the 
fact that there was something in a manner decora- 
tive even in Brissenden's wonted gloom. He re- 
minded me at this hour more than ever of some fine 
old Velasquez or other portrait — a presentation of 
ugliness and melancholy that might have been 
royal. There was as little of the common in his dry, 
distinguished patience as in the case I had made out 
for him. Blighted and ensconed, he looked at it 
over the rigid convention, his peculiar perfection 
of necktie, shirt-front and waistcoat, as some aged 
remnant of sovereignty at the opera looks over the 
ribbon of an order and the ledge of a box. 

I must add, however, that in spite of my sense 
of his wife's indulgence I kept quite aware of the 
nearer approach, as course followed course, of my 
hour of reckoning with her — more and more saw 
the moment of the evening at which, frankly amused 

158 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

at last at having me in a cleft stick, she would draw 
me a little out of the throng. Of course, also, I was 
much occupied in asking myself to what degree I 
was prepared to be perjured. Was I ready to pre- 
tend that my candour was still unconvinced? And 
was I in this case only instinctively mustering my 
arguments? I was certainly as sorry that Mrs. Ser- 
ver was out of my view as if I proposed still to fight; 
and I really felt, so far as that went, as if there might 
be something to fight for after the lady on my left 
had given me a piece of news. I had asked her if 
she happened to know, as we couldn't see, who was 
next Mrs. Server, and, though unable to say at the 
moment, she made no scruple, after a short interval, 
of ascertaining with the last directness. The stretch 
forward in which she had indulged, or the informa- 
tion she had caused to be passed up to her while 
I was again engaged on my right, established that 
it was Lord Lutley who had brought the lovely lady 
in and that it was Mr. Long who was on her other 
side. These things indeed were not the finest point 
of my companion's communication, for I saw that 
what she felt I would be really interested in was the 
fact that Mr. Long had brought in Lady John, who 
was naturally, therefore, his other neighbour. Be- 
yond Lady John was Mr. Obert, and beyond Mr. 
Obert Mrs. Froome, not, for a wonder, this time 
paired, as by the immemorial tradition, so fairly 
comical in its candour, with Lord Lutley. Wasn't 

159 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

it too funny, the kind of grandmotherly view of 
their relation shown in their always being put to- 
gether? If I perhaps questioned whether " grand- 
motherly " were exactly the name for the view, 
what yet at least was definite in the light of this 
evening's arrangement w-as that there did occur oc- 
casions on which they were put apart. My friend 
of course disposed of this observation by the usual 
exception that "proved the rule"; but it was ab- 
surd how I had thrilled w-ith her announcement, and 
our exchange of ideas meanwhile helped to carry 
me on. 

My theory had not at all been framed to embrace 
the phenomenon thus presented; it had been pre- 
cisely framed, on the contrary, to hang together 
with the observed inveteracy of escape, on the part 
of the two persons about whom it busied itself, from 
public juxtaposition of more than a moment. I 
was fairly upset by the need to consider at this late 
hour whether going in for a new theory or bracing 
myself for new facts would hold out to me the better 
refuge. It is perhaps not too much to say that I 
should scarce have been able to sit still at all but 
for the support afforded me by the oddity of the 
separation of Lord Lutley and Mrs. Froome; which, 
though resting on a general appearance directly op- 
posed to that of my friends, offered somehow the 
relief of a suggestive analogy. What I could di- 
rectly clutch at was that if the exception did prove 

1 60 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the rule in the one case it might equally prove it in 
the other. If on a rare occasion one of these 
couples might be divided, so, by as uncommon a 
chance, the other might be joined; the only differ- 
ence being in the gravity of the violated law. For 
which pair was the betrayal greatest? It was not 
till dinner was nearly ended and the ladies were 
about to withdraw that I recovered lucidity to make 
out how much more machinery would have had to 
be put into motion consistently to prevent, than 
once in a way to minimise, the disconcerting acci- 
dent. 

All accidents, I must add, were presently to lose 
themselves in the unexpectedness of my finding my- 
self, before we left the dining-room, in easy talk 
with Gilbert Long — talk that was at least easy for 
him, whatever it might have struck me as necessa- 
rily destined to be for me. I felt as he approached 
me — for he did approach me — that it was somehow 
" important "; I was so aware that something in the 
state of my conscience would have prevented me 
from assuming conversation between us to be at 
this juncture possible. The state of my conscience 
was that I knew too much — that no one had really 
any business to know what I knew. If he suspected 
but the fiftieth part of it there was no simple spirit 
in which he could challenge me. It would have 
been simple of course to desire to knock me down, 
but that was barred by its being simple to excess. 

i6i 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It wouldn't even have been enough for him merely 
to ground it on a sudden fancy. It fitted, in fine, 
with my cogitations that it was so significant for 
him to wish to speak to me that I didn't envy him 
his attempt at the particular shade of assurance re- 
quired for carrying the thing off. He would have 
learned from Mrs. Server that I was not, as regarded 
them, at all as others were; and thus his idea, the 
fruit of that stimulation, could only be either to 
fathom, to felicitate, or — as it were — to destroy me. 
What was at the same time obvious was that no one 
of these attitudes would go quite of itself. The 
simple sight of him as he quitted his chair to take 
one nearer my own brought home to me in a flash 
— and much more than anything had yet done — 
the real existence in him of the condition it was my 
private madness (none the less private for Grace 
Brissenden's so limited glimpse of it,) to believe I 
had coherently stated. Is not this small touch per- 
haps the best example I can give of the intensity of 
amusement I had at last enabled my private mad- 
ness to yield me? I found myself owing it, from 
this time on and for the rest of the evening, mo- 
ments of the highest concentration. 

Whatever there might have been for me of pain 
or doubt was washed straight out by the special sen- 
sation of seeing how " clever " poor Long not only 
would have to be, but confidently and actually was; 
inasmuch as this apprehension seemed to put me in 

162 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

possession of his cleverness, besides leaving me all 
my own. I made him welcome, I helped him to 
another cigarette, I felt above all that I should en- 
joy him; my response to his overture was, in other 
words, quickly enough to launch us. Yet I fear I 
can do little justice to the pleasant suppressed tu- 
mult of impression and reflection that, on my part, 
our ten minutes together produced. The elements 
that mingled in it scarce admit of discrimination. 
It was still more than previously a deep sense of be- 
ing justified. My interlocutor was for those ten 
minutes immeasurably superior — superior, I mean, 
to himself — and he couldn't possibly have become 
so save through the relation I had so patiently 
tracked. He faced me there with another light 
than his own, spoke with another sound, thought 
with another ease and understood with another ear. 
I should put it that what came up between us was 
the mere things of the occasion, were it not for the 
fine point to which, in my view, the things of the 
occasion had been brought. While our eyes, at all 
events, on either side, met serenely, and our talk, 
dealing with the idea, dealing with the extraordi- 
nary special charm, of the social day now deepening 
to its end, touched our companions successively, 
touched the manner in which this one and that had 
happened to be predominantly a part of that charm; 
while such were our immediate conditions I won- 
dered of course if he had not, just as consciously 

163 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and essentially as I, quite another business in mind. 
It was not indeed that our allusion to the other busi- 
ness would not have been wholly undiscoverable by 
a third person. 

So far as it took place it was of a " subtlety," as 
we used to say at Newmarch, in relation to which 
the common register of that pressure would have 
been, I fear, too old-fashioned a barometer. I had 
moreover the comfort — for it amounted to that — 
of perceiving after a little that we understood each 
other too well for our understanding really to have 
tolerated the interference of passion, such passion 
as would have been represented on his side by re- 
sentment of my intelligence and on my side by 
resentment of his. The high sport of such intelli- 
gence — between gentlemen, to the senses of any 
other than whom it must surely be closed — de- 
manded and implied in its own intimate interest a 
certain amenity. Yes, accordingly, I had promptly 
got the answer that my wonder at his approach re- 
quired : he had come to me for the high sport. He 
would formerly have been incapable of it, and he 
was beautifully capable of it now. It was precisely 
the kind of high sport — the play of perception, ex- 
pression, sociability — in which Mrs. Server would 
a year or two before have borne as light a hand. I 
need scarcely add how little it would have found it- 
self in that lady's present chords. He had said to 
me in our ten minutes everything amusing she 

164 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

couldn't have said. Yet if when our host gave us 
the sign to adjourn to the drawing-room so much 
as all this had grown so much clearer, I had still, 
figuratively speaking, a small nut or two left to 
crack. By the time we moved away together, how- 
ever, these resistances had yielded. The answers 
had really only been waiting for the questions. The 
play of Long's mind struck me as more marked, 
since the morning, by the same amount, as it might 
have been called, as the march of poor Briss's age; 
and if I had, a while before, in the wood, had my 
explanation of this latter addition, so I had it 
now of the former — as to which I shall presently 
give it. 

When music, in English society, as we know, is 
not an accompaniment to the voice, the voice can 
in general be counted on to assert its pleasant iden- 
tity as an accompaniment to music; but at New- 
march we had been considerably schooled, and this 
evening, in the room in which most of us had as- 
sembled, an interesting pianist, who had given a 
concert the night before at the near county town 
and been brought over during the day to dine and 
sleep, would scarce have felt in any sensitive fibre 
that he was not having his way with us. It may 
just possibly have been an hallucination of my own, 
but while we sat together after dinner in a dispersed 
circle I could have worked it out that, as a company, 
we were considerably conscious of some experience, 

165 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

greater or smaller from one of us to the other, that 
had prepared us for the player's spell. Felicitously 
scattered and grouped, we might in almost any case 
have had the air of looking for a message from it — 
of an imagination to be flattered, nerves to be 
quieted, sensibilities to be soothed. The whole 
scene was as composed as if there were scarce one 
of us but had a secret thirst for the infinite to be 
quenched. And it was the infinite that, for the 
hour, the distinguished foreigner poured out to us, 
causing it to roll in wonderful waves of sound, al- 
most of colour, over our receptive attitudes and 
faces. Each of us, I think, now wore the expres- 
sion — or confessed at least to the suggestion — of 
some indescribable thought; which might well, it 
was true, have been nothing more unmentionable 
than the simple sense of how the posture of defer- 
ence to this noble art has always a certain personal 
grace to contribute. We neglected nothing of it 
that could make our general effect ample, and 
whether or no we were kept quiet by the piano, we 
were at least admonished, to and fro, by our mutual 
visibility, which each of us clearly desired to make 
a success. I have little doubt, furthermore, that to 
each of us was due, as the crown of our inimitable 
day, the imputation of having something quite of 
our own to think over. 

We thought, accordingly — we continued to 
think, and I felt that, by the law of the occasion, 

i66 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

there had as yet been for everyone no such sover- 
eign warrant for an interest in the private afifairs 
of everyone else. As a result of this influence all 
that at dinner had begun to fade away from me 
came back with a rush and hovered there with a 
vividness. I followed many trains and put together 
many pieces; but perhaps what I most did was to 
render a fresh justice to the marvel of our civilised 
state. The perfection of that, enjoyed as we en- 
joyed it, all made a margin, a series of concentric 
circles of rose-colour (shimmering away into the 
pleasant vague of everything else that didn't mat- 
ter,) for the so salient little figure of Mrs. Server, 
still the controlling image for me, the real principle 
of composition, in this affluence of fine things. 
What, for my part, while I listened, I most made 
out was the beauty and the terror of conditions so 
highly organised that under their rule her small 
lonely fight with disintegration could go on without 
the betrayal of a gasp or a shriek, and with no worse 
tell-tale contortion of lip or brow than the vibration, 
on its golden stem, of that constantly renewed 
flower of amenity which my observation had so 
often and so mercilessly detached only to find again 
in its place. This flower nodded perceptibly 
enough in our deeply stirred air, but there was a 
peace, none the less, in feeling the spirit of the 
wearer to be temporarily at rest. There was for the 
time no gentleman on whom she need pounce, no 

167 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

lapse against which she need guard, no presumption 
she need create, nor any suspicion she need destroy. 
In this pause in her career it came over me that I 
should have liked to leave her; it would have pre- 
pared for me the pleasant after-consciousness that 
I had seen her pass, as I might say, in music out of 
sight. 

But we were, alas ! all too much there, too much 
tangled and involved for that; every actor in the 
play that had so unexpectedly insisted on constitut- 
ing itself for me sat forth as with an intimation that 
they were not to be so easily disposed of. It was 
as if there were some last act to be performed before 
the curtain could fall. Would the definite dramatic 
signal for ringing the curtain down be then only — 
as a grand climax and coup de theatre — the due at- 
testation that poor Briss had succumbed to inexor- 
able time and Mrs. Server given way under a cere- 
bral lesion? Were the rest of us to disperse 
decorously by the simple action of the discovery 
that, on our pianist's striking his last note, with its 
consequence of permitted changes of attitude, Gil- 
bert Long's victim had reached the point of final 
simpHfication and Grace Brissenden's the limit of 
age recorded of man? I could look at neither of 
these persons without a sharper sense of the con- 
trast between the tragedy of their predicament and 
the comedy of the situation that did everything for 
them but suspect it. They had truly been arrayed 

i68 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and anointed, they had truly been isolated, for their 
sacrifice. I was sufficiently aware even then that if 
one hadn't known it one might have seen nothing; 
but I was not less aware that one couldn't know any- 
thing without seeing all; and so it was that, while 
our pianist played, my wandering vision played and 
played as well. It took in again, while it went from 
one of them to the other, the delicate light that 
each had shed on the other, and it made me wonder 
afresh what still more delicate support they them- 
selves might not be in the very act of deriving from 
their dim community. It was for the ghmmer of 
this support that I had left them together two or 
three hours before; yet I was obliged to recognise 
that, travel between them as my fancy might, it 
could detect nothing in the way of a consequent 
result. I caught no look from either that spoke to 
me of service rendered them; and I caught none, 
in particular, from one of them to the other, that I 
could read as a symptom of their having compared 
notes. The fellow-feeling of each for the lost light 
of the other remained for me but a tie suppositi- 
tious — the full-blown flower of my theory. It 
would show here as another flower, equally mature, 
for me to have made out a similar dim community 
between Gilbert Long and Mrs. Brissenden — to be 
able to figure them as groping side by side, pro- 
portionately, towards a fellowship of light over- 
taken; but if I failed of this, for ideal symmetry, that 

169 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

seemed to rest on the general truth that joy brings 
people less together than sorrow. 

So much for the course of my impressions while 
the music lasted — a course quite consistent with 
my being prepared for new combinations as soon 
as it was over. Promptly, when that happened, 
the bow was unbent; and the combination I first 
seized, amid motion and murmur and rustle, was 
that, once more, of poor Briss and Lady John, the 
latter of whom had already profited by the general 
reaction to endeavour to cultivate afresh the vainest 
of her sundry appearances. She had laid on him 
the same coercive hand to which I owed my having 
found him with her in the afternoon, but my inter- 
vention was now to operate with less ceremony. I 
chanced to be near enough to them for Brissenden, 
on seeing me, to fix his eyes on me in silence, but 
in a manner that could only bring me immediately 
nearer. Lady John never did anything in silence, 
but she greeted me as I came up to them with a 
fine false alarm. " No, indeed," she cried, " you 
shan't carry him off this time ! " — and poor Briss 
disappeared, leaving us face to face, even while she 
breathed defiance. He had made no joke of it, and 
I had from him no other recognition; it was there- 
fore a mere touch, yet it gave me a sensible hint 
that he had begun, as things were going, to depend 
upon me, that I already in a fashion figured to him 
— and on amazingly little evidence after all — as his 

170 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

natural protector, his providence, his effective om- 
niscience. Like Mrs. Server herself, he was mate- 
rially on my hands, and it was proper I should " do " 
for him. I wondered if he were really beginning 
to look to me to avert his inexorable fate. Well, 
if his inexorable fate was to be an unnameable cli- 
max, it had also its special phases, and one of these 
I had just averted. I followed him a moment with 
my eyes and I then observed to Lady John that she 
decidedly took me for too simple a person. She 
had meanwhile also watched the direction taken by 
her liberated victim, and was the next instant pre- 
pared with a reply to my charge. " Because he has 
gone to talk with May Server? I don't quite see 
what you mean, for I believe him really to be in ter- 
ror of her. Most of the men here are, you know, 
and I've really assured myself that he doesn't find 
her any less awful than the rest. He finds her the 
more so by just the very marked extra attention 
that you may have noticed she has given him." 

" And does that now happen to be what he has 
so eagerly gone off to impress upon her? " 

Lady John was so placed that she could continue 
to look at our friends, and I made out in her that 
she was not, in respect to them, without some slight 
elements of perplexity. These were even sufficient 
to make her temporarily neglect the defence of the 
breach I had made in her consistency. " If you 
mean by * impressing upon ' her speaking to her, he 

171 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

hasn't gone — you can see for yourself — to impress 
upon her anything; they have the most extraordi- 
nary way, which I've already observed, of sitting 
together without sound. I don't know," she 
laughed, " what's the matter with such people ! " 

" It proves in general," I admitted, " either some 
coldness or some warmth, and I quite understand 
that that's not the way you sit with your friends. 
You steer admirably clear of every extravagance. 
I don't see, at any rate, why Mrs. Server is a ter- 
ror " 

But she had already taken me up. " If she 
doesn't chatter as / do? " She thought it over. 
" But she does — to everyone but Mr. Briss. I 
mean to every man she can pick up." 

I emulated her reflection. " Do they complain 
of it to you? " 

"They're more civil than you," she returned; 
" for if, when they flee before it, they bump up 
against me in their flight, they don't explain that by 
intimating that they're come from bad to worse. 
Besides, I see what they suffer." 

"And do you hear it? " 

" What they sufTer? No, I've taken care not to 
suffer myself. I don't listen. It's none of my busi- 
ness." 

" Is that a way of gently expressing," I ventured 
to ask, " that it's also none of mine? " 

" It might be," she replied, " if I had, as you ap- 
172 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

pear to, the imagination of atrocity. But I don't 
pretend to so much as conceive what's your busi- 
ness." 

" I wonder if it isn't just now," I said after a mo- 
ment, " to convict you of an attempt at duplicity 
that has not even had the saving grace of success ! 
Was it for Brissenden himself that you spoke just 
now as if you believed him to wish to cling to you? " 

" Well, I'm kind enough for anything," she good- 
naturedly enough laughed. " But what," she 
asked more sharply, " are you trying to find out? " 

Such an awful lot, the answer to this would po- 
litely have been, that I daresay the aptness of the 
question produced in my face a shade of embarrass- 
ment. I felt, however, the next moment that I 
needn't fear too much. What I, on approaching 
Lady John, had found myself moved to test, using 
her in it as a happy touchstone, was the degree of 
the surrounding, the latent, sense of things : an im- 
pulse confirmed by the manner in which she had 
momentarily circled about the phenomenon of Mrs. 
Server's avidity, about the mystery of the terms 
made with it by our friend. It was present to me 
that if I could catch, on the part of my interlocu- 
tress, anything of a straight scent, I might take that 
as the measure of a diffused danger. I mentally 
applied this term to the possibility of diffusion, be- 
cause I suddenly found myself thinking with a kind 
of horror of any accident by which I might have to 

173 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

expose to the world, to defend against the world, 
to share with the world, that now so complex tangle 
of hypotheses that I have had for convenience to 
speak of as my theory. I could toss the ball myself, 
I could catch it and send it back, and familiarity 
had now made this exercise — in my own inner pre- 
cincts — easy and safe. But the mere brush of Lady 
John's clumsier curiosity made me tremble for the 
impunity of my creation. If there had been, so to 
speak, a discernment, however feeble, of my discern- 
ment, it would have been irresistible to me to take 
this as the menace of some incalculable catastrophe 
or some public ugliness. It wasn't for me definitely 
to image the logical result of a verification by the 
sense of others of the matter of my vision; but the 
thing had only to hang before me as a chance for me 
to feel that I should utterly object to it, though I 
may appear to weaken this statement if I add that 
the opportunity to fix the degree of my actual com- 
panion's betrayed mystification was almost a spell. 
This, I conceive, was just by reason of what was at 
stake. How could I happily tell her what I was try- 
ing to find out? — tell her, that is, not too much for 
security and yet enough for relief? The best an- 
swer seemed a brave jump. I was conscious of a 
certain credit open with her in my appearance of 
intellectual sympathy. 

" Well," I brought out at last, " I'm quite aching 
to ask you if you'll forgive me a great liberty, which 

174 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I owe to your candid challenge my opportunity to 
name. Will you allow me to say frankly that I 
think you play a dangerous game with poor Briss, 
in whom I confess I'm interested? I don't of course 
speak of the least danger to yourself; but it's an in- 
justice to any man to make use of him quite so 
flagrantly. You don't in the least flatter yourself 
that the poor fellow is in love with you — you 
wouldn't care a bit if he were. Yet you're willing 
to make him think you like him, so far as that may 
be necessary to explain your so frequently ingenious 
appropriation of him. He doesn't like you too 
much, as yet; doesn't even Hke you quite enough. 
But your potency may, after all, work on him, and 
then, as your interest is so obviously quite elsewhere, 
what will happen will be that you'll find, to your in- 
convenience, that you've gone too far. A man 
never likes a woman enough unless he likes her 
more than enough. Unfortunately it's what the in- 
veterate ass is sure sooner or later to do." 

Lady John looked just enough interested to look 
detached from most of the more vulgar liabilities 
to offence. " Do I understand that to be the pretty 
name by which you describe Mr. Briss? " 

" He has his share of it, for I'm thinking of the 
idiots that we everyone of us are. I throw out a 
warning against a contingency." 

" Are you providing for the contingency of his 
ceasing to care for his wife? If you are " — and 

175 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

Lady John's amusement took on a breadth — " you 
may be said to have a prudent mind and to be taking 
time by the forelock." 

At this I pricked up my ears. " Do you mean 
because of his apparently incorruptible con- 
stancy? " 

" I mean because the whole thing's so before one. 
She has him so in hand that they're neither of them 
in as much danger as would count for a mouse. It 
doesn't prevent his liking to dally by the way — for 
she dallies by the way, and he does everything she 
does. Haven't I observed her," Lady John contin- 
ued, " dallying a little, so far as that goes, with 
you? You've the tact to tell me that he doesn't 
think me good enough, but I don't require, do I? — 
for such a purpose as his — to be very extraordina- 
rily good. You may say that you wrap it up im- 
mensely and try to sugar the dose! Well, all the 
same, give up, for a quiet life, the attempt to be a 
providence. You can't be a providence and not be 
a bore. A real providence knozvs; whereas you," 
said Lady John, making her point neatly, " have to 
find out — and to find out even by asking ' the likes 
of ' me. Your fine speech meanwhile doesn't a bit 
tell me what." 

It afifected me again that she could get so near 
without getting nearer. True enough it was that 
I wanted to find out; and though I might expect, 
or fear, too much of her, I wondered at her only 

176 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

seeing this — at her not reading deeper. The peril 
of the public ugliness that haunted me rose or fell, 
at this moment, with my varying view of her density. 
Or rather, to be more exact, I already saw her as 
necessarily stupid because I saw her as extravagant- 
ly vain. What I see now of course is that I was on 
my own side almost stupidly hard with her — as I 
may also at that hour have been subject to her other 
vice. Didn't I perhaps, in proportion as I felt how 
little she saw, think awfully well of myself, as we 
said at Newmarch, for seeing so much more? It 
comes back to me that the sense thus estabHshed 
of my superior vision may perfectly have gone a 
little to my head. If it was a frenzied fallacy I was 
all to blame, but if it was anything else whatever 
i\ was naturally intoxicating. I really remember 
in fact that nothing so much as this confirmed pre- 
sumption of my impunity had appeared to me to 
mark the fine quality of my state. I think there 
must fairly have been a pitch at which I was not sure 
that not to partake of that state was, on the part of 
others, the sign of a gregarious vulgarity; as if there 
were a positive advantage, an undiluted bliss, in the 
intensity of consciousness that I had reached. / 
alone was magnificently and absurdly aware — 
everyone else was benightedly out of it. So I re- 
flected that there would be almost nothing I 
mightn't with safety mention to my present subject 
of practice as an acknowledgment that I was med- 

177 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

dlesome. I could put no clue in her hand that her 
notorious acuteness would make of the smallest use 
to her. The most she could do would be to make it 
of use to myself, and the clue it seemed best to select 
was therefore a complete confession of guilt. 

" You've a lucidity of your own in which I'm 
forced to recognise that the highest purity of motive 
looks shrivelled and black. You bring out accord- 
ingly what has made me thus beat about the bush. 
Have you really such a fund of indulgence for Gil- 
bert Long as we most of us, I gather — though per- 
haps in our blindness — seem to see it stick out again 
that he supposes? May he fondly feel that he can 
continue to count on it? Or, if you object to my 
question in that form, is it not, frankly, to making 
his attitude — after all so thoroughly public — more 
convenient to each of you that (without perhaps 
quite measuring what you're about,) you've gone 
on sacrificing poor Briss? I call it sacrificing, you 
see, in spite of there having been as yet no such 
great harm done. And if you ask m.e again what 
business of mine such inquiries may represent, why, 
the best thing will doubtless be to say to you that, 
with a smaller dose of irrepressible irony in my com- 
position than you have in yours, I can't make so 
light as you of my tendency to worry on behalf of 
those I care for. Let me finally hasten to add that 
I'm not now including in that category either of the 
two gentlemen I've named." 

178 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I freely concede, as I continue my record, that to 
follow me at all, at this point, gave proof on Lady 
John's part of a faculty that should have prevent- 
ed my thinking of her as inordinately backward. 
" Then who in the world are these objects of your 
solicitude? " 

I showed, over and above my hesitation, my re- 
gret for the need of it. " I'm afraid I can't tell 
you." 

At this, not unnaturally, she fairly scoffed. " Ask- 
ing me everything and telling me nothing, you 
nevertheless look to me to satisfy you? Do you 
mean," she pursued, " that you speak for persons 
whose interest is more legitimately founded than 
the interest you so flatteringly attribute to myself? " 

" Well, yes — let them be so described ! Can't 
you guess," I further risked, " who constitutes at 
least one of my preoccupations? " 

The condescension of her consent to think 
marked itself handsomely enough, '' Is it your idea 
to pretend to me that I'm keeping Grace Brissen- 
den awake? " There was consistency enough in 
her wonder. " She has not been anything but nice 
to me; she's not a person whose path one crosses 
without finding it out; and I can't imagine what has 
got into her if any such grievance as that is what 
she has been pouring out to you in your apparently 
so deep confabulations." 

This toss of the ball was one that, I saw quickly 
179 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

enough, even a taste for sport wouldn't justify my 
answering, and my logical interest lay moreover 
elsewhere. " Dear no ! Mrs. Brissenden certainly 
feels her strength, and I should never presume to 
take under my charge any personal situation of hers. 
I had in my mind a very different identity." 

Lady John, as if to be patient with me, looked 
about at our companions for a hint of it, wondering 
which of the ladies I might have been supposed to 
" care for " so much as to tolerate in her a prefer- 
ence for a rival; but the effect of this survey was, I 
the next instant observed, a drop of her attention 
from what I had been saying. Her eye had been 
caught by the sight of Gilbert Long within range 
of us, and then had been just visibly held by the fact 
that the person seated with him on one of the small 
sofas that almost of necessity made conversation in- 
timate was the person whose name, just uttered be- 
tween us, was, in default of the name she was in 
search of, still in the air. Gilbert Long and Mrs. 
Briss were in familiar colloquy — though I was 
aware, at the first flush, of nothing in this that 
should have made my interlocutress stare. That is 
I was aware of nothing but that I had simultaneous- 
ly myself been moved to some increase of sharpness. 
What could I have known that should have caused 
me to wonder at the momentary existence of this 
particular conjunction of minds unless it were sim- 
ply the fact that I hadn't seen it occur amid the 

1 80 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

many conjunctions I had already noticed — plus the 
fact that I had a few minutes before, in the interest 
of the full roundness of my theory, actually been 
missing it? These two persons had met in my pres- 
ence at Paddington and had travelled together 
under my eyes; I had talked of Mrs. Briss with Long 
and of Long with Mrs. Briss; but the vivid picture 
that their social union forthwith presented stirred 
within me, though so strangely late in the day, it 
might have seemed, for such an emotion, more than 
enough freshness of impression. Yet — now that 
I did have it there — why should it be vivid, why 
stirring, why a picture at all? Was any temporary 
collocation, in a house so encouraging to sociability, 
out of the range of nature? Intensely prompt, I 
need scarcely say, were both my freshness and my 
perceived objections to it. The happiest objection, 
could I have taken time to phrase it, would doubt- 
less have been that the particular effect of this jux- 
taposition — to my eyes at least — was a thing not to 
have been foreseen. The parties to it looked, cer- 
tainly, as I felt that I hadn't prefigured them; 
though even this, for my reason, was not a descrip- 
tion of their aspect. Much less was it a description 
for the intelligence of Lady John — to whom, how- 
ever, after all, some formulation of what she dimly 
saw would not be so indispensable. 

We briefly watched, at any rate, together, and as 
our eyes met again we moreover confessed that we 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

had watched. And we could ostensibly have offered 
each other no explanation of that impulse save that 
we had been talking of those concerned as separate 
and that it was in consequence a little odd to find 
ourselves suddenly seeing them as one. For that 
was it — they zvcre as one; as one, at all events, for 
my large reading. My large reading had mean- 
while, for the convenience of the rest of my little 
talk with Lady John, to make itself as small as pos- 
sible. I had an odd sense, till we fell apart again, 
as of keeping my finger rather stiffly fixed on a pas- 
sage in a favourite author on which I had not pre- 
viously lighted. I held the book out of sight and 
behind me; I spoke of things that were not at all in 
it — or not at all on that particular page; but my vol- 
ume, none the less, was only waiting. What might 
be written there hummed already in my ears as a re- 
sult of my mere glimpse. Had they also wonder- 
fully begun to know? Had she, most wonderfully, 
and had they, in that case, prodigiously come to- 
gether on it? This was a possibility into which my 
imagination could dip even deeper than into the 
depths over which it had conceived the other pair 
as hovering. These opposed couples balanced like 
bronze groups at the two ends of a chimney-piece, 
and the most I could say to myself in lucid depreca- 
tion of my thought was that I mustn't take them 
equally for granted merely because they balanced. 
Things in the real had a way of not balancing; it was 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

all an affair, this fine symmetry, of artificial propor- 
tion. Yet even while I kept my eyes away from 
Mrs. Briss and Long it was vivid to me that, " com- 
posing " there beautifully, they could scarce help 
playing a part in my exhibition. The mind of man, 
furthermore — and my generalisation pressed hard, 
with a quick twist, on the supersubtlety as to which 
I had just been privately complacent — the mind of 
man doubtless didn't know from one minute to the 
other, under the appeal of phantasmagoric life, what 
it would profitably be at. It had struck me a few 
seconds before as vulgarly gross in Lady John that 
she was curious, or conscious, of so small a part; in 
spite of which I was already secretly wincing at the 
hint that these others had begun to find themselves 
less in the dark and perhaps even directly to ex- 
change their glimmerings. 

My personal privilege, on the basis of the full 
consciousness, had become, on the spot, in the turn 
of an eye, more than questionable, and I was really 
quite scared at the chance of having to face — of hav- 
ing to see them face — another recognition. What 
did this alarm imply but the complete reversal of 
my estimate of the value of perception? Mrs. Bris- 
senden and Long had been hitherto magnificently 
without it, and I was responsible perhaps for hav- 
ing, in a mood practically much stupider than the 
stupidest of theirs, put them gratuitously and help- 
lessly on it. To be without it was the most consist- 

183 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ent, the most successful, because the most amiable, 
form of selfishness; and why should people admira- 
bly equipped for remaining so, people bright and 
insolent in their prior state, people in whom this 
state was to have been respected as a surface with- 
out a scratch is respected, be made to begin to 
vibrate, to crack and split, from within? Wasn't it 
enough for me to pay, vicariously, the tax on being 
absurd? Were we all to be landed, without an issue 
or a remedy, in a condition on which that tax would 
be generally levied? It was as if, abruptly, with a 
new emotion, I had wished to unthink every 
thought with which I had been occupied for twenty- 
four hours. Let me add, however, that even had 
this process been manageable I was aware of not 
proposing to begin it till I should have done with 
Lady John. 

The time she took to meet my last remark is nat- 
urally not represented by this prolonged glance of 
mine at the amount of suggestion that just then 
happened to reach me from the other quarter. It 
at all events duly came out between us that Mrs. 
Server was the person I did have on my mind; and 
I remember that it had seemed to me at the end of a 
minute to matter comparatively little by which of 
us, after all, she was first designated. There is per- 
haps an oddity — which I must set down to my emo- 
tion of the moment — in my not now being able to 
say. I should have been hugely startled if the sight 

184 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

of Gilbert Long had appeared to make my compan- 
ion suddenly think of her; and reminiscence of that 
shock is not one of those I have found myself stor- 
ing up. What does abide with me is the memory 
of how, after a little, my apprehensions, of various 
kinds, dropped — most of all under the deepening 
conviction that Lady John was not a whit less agree- 
ably superficial than I could even at the worst have 
desired. The point established for me was that, 
whereas she passed with herself and so many others 
as taking in everything, she had taken in nothing 
whatever that it was to my purpose she should not 
take. Vast, truly, was the world of observation, 
that we could both glean in it so actively without 
crossing each other's steps. There we stood close 
together, yet — save for the accident of a final dash, 
as I shall note — were at opposite ends of the field. 

It's a matter as to which the truth sounds prig- 
gish, but I can't help it if — yes, positively — it affect- 
ed me as hopelessly vulgar to have made any induc- 
tion at all about our companions but those I have 
recorded, in such detail, on behalf of my own energy. 
It was better verily not to have touched them — 
which was the case of everyone else — than to have 
taken them up, with knowing gestures, only to do 
so little with them. That I felt the interest of May 
Server, that May Server felt the interest of poor 
Briss, and that my feeling incongruously presented 
itself as putting up, philosophically, with the incon- 

185 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

venience of the lady's — these were, in fine, circum- 
stances to which she clearly attached ideas too com- 
monplace for me to judge it useful to gather them 
in. She read all things, Lady John, heaven knows, 
in the light of the universal possibility of a " rela- 
tion "; but most of the relations that she had up 
her sleeve could thrust themselves into my theory 
only to find themselves, the next minute, eliminated. 
They were of alien substance — insoluble in the 
whole. Gilbert Long had for her no connection, 
in my deeper sense, with Mrs. Server, nor Mrs. Ser- 
ver with Gilbert Long, nor the husband with the 
wife, nor the wife with the husband, nor I with 
either member of either pair, nor anyone with any- 
thing, nor anything with anyone. She was thus 
exactly where I wanted her to be, for, frankly, I 
became conscious, at this climax of my conclusion, 
that I a little wanted her to be where she had dis- 
tinctly ended by betraying to me that her proper 
inspiration had placed her. If I have just said that 
my apprehensions, of various kinds, had finally and 
completely subsided, a more exact statement would 
perhaps have been that from the moment our eyes 
met over the show of our couple on the sofa, the 
question of any other calculable thing than that 
hint of a relation had simply known itself super- 
seded. Reduced to its plainest terms, this sketch 
of an improved acquaintance between our comrades 
was designed to make Lady John think. It was 

1 86 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

designed to make me do no less, but we thought, 
inevitably, on different lines. 

I have already so represented my successions of 
reflection as rapid that I may not appear to exceed 
in mentioning the amusement and philosophy with 
which I presently perceived it as unmistakable that 
she believed in the depth of her new sounding. It 
visibly went down for her much nearer to the bot- 
tom of the sea than any plumb I might be qualified 
to drop. Poor Briss was in love with his wife — that, 
when driven to the wall, she had had to recognise; 
but she had not had to recognise that his wife was 
in love with poor Briss. What was then to militate, 
on that lady's part, against a due consciousness, at 
the end of a splendid summer day, a day on which 
occasions had been so multiplied, of an impression 
of a special order? What was to prove that there 
was " nothing in it " when two persons sat looking 
so very exceptionally much as if there were every- 
thing in it, as if they were for the first time — thanks 
to finer opportunity — doing each other full justice? 
Mustn't it indeed at this juncture have come a little 
over my friend that Grace had lent herself with un- 
common good nature, the previous afternoon, to the 
arrangement by which, on the way from town, her 
ladyship's reputation was to profit by no worse 
company, precisely, than poor Briss's? Mrs. Bris- 
senden's own was obviously now free to profit by 
my companion's remembering — if the fact had 

187 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

reached her ears — that Mrs. Brissenden had mean- 
while had Long for an escort. So much, at least, 
I saw Lady John as seeing, and my vision may be 
taken as representing the dash I have confessed my- 
self as making from my end of our field. It offers 
us, to be exact, as jostling each other just sensibly — 
though / only might feel the bruise — in our business 
of picking up straws. Our view of the improved 
acquaintance was only a straw, but as I stooped to 
it I felt my head bump with my neighbour's. This 
might have made me ashamed of my eagerness, but, 
oddly enough, that effect was not to come. I felt 
in fact that, since we had even pulled against each 
other at the straw, I carried off, in turning away, the 
larger piece. 



X 

TT was in the moment of turning- away that I 
-*• somehow learned, without looking, that Mrs. 
Brissenden had also immediately moved. I wanted 
to look and yet had my reasons for not appearing 
to do it too quickly; in spite of which I found my 
friends, even after an interval, still distinguishable 
as separating for the avoidance of comment. Gil- 
bert Long, rising directly after his associate, had 
already walked away, but this associate, lingering 
where she stood and meeting me with it, availed 
herself of the occasion to show that she wished to 
speak to me. Such was the idea she threw out on 
my forthwith going to her. " For a few minutes — 
presently." 

" Do you mean alone? Shall I come with you? " 
She hesitated long enough for me to judge her 
as a trifle surprised at my being so ready — as if in- 
deed she had rather hoped I wouldn't be; which 
would have been an easy pretext to her to gain time. 
In fact, with a face not quite like the brave face she 
had at each step hitherto shown me, yet unlike in 
a fashion I should certainly not have been able to 
define on the spot; with an expression, in short, that 

189 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

struck me as taking refuge in a general reminder 
that not my convenience, but her own, was in ques- 
tion, she replied : " Oh, no — but before it's too late. 
A few minutes hence. Where shall you be? " she 
asked with a shade, as I imagined, of awkwardness. 
She had looked about as for symptoms of accept- 
ance of the evening's end on the part of the ladies, 
but we could both see our hostess otherwise occu- 
pied. " We don't go up quite yet. In the morn- 
ing," she added as with an afterthought, " I sup- 
pose you leave early." 

I debated. " I haven't thought. And you? " 
She looked at me straighter now. " I haven't 
thought either." Then she was silent, neither turn- 
ing away nor coming to the point, as it seemed to 
me she might have done, of telling me what she had 
in her head. I even fancied that her momentary 
silence, combined with the way she faced me — as if 
that might speak for her — was meant for an assur- 
ance that, whatever train she should take in the 
morning, she would arrange that it shouldn't be, 
as it had been the day before, the same as mine. I 
really caught in her attitude a world of invidious 
reference to the little journey we had already made 
together. She had sympathies, she had proprieties 
that imposed themselves, and I was not to think 
that any little journey was to be thought of again 
in those conditions. It came over me that this 
might have been quite a matter discussed by her, 

190 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

discussed and settled, with her interlocutor on the 
sofa. It came over me that if, before our break-up 
for the night, I should happen also to have a min- 
ute's talk with that interlocutor, I would equally get 
from it the sense of an intention unfavourable to our 
departing in the same group. And I wondered if 
this, in that case, wouldn't afTect me as marking a 
change back to Long's old manner — a forfeiture of 
the conditions, whatever view might be taken of 
them, that had made him, at Paddington, suddenly 
show himself as so possible and so pleasant. If 
he " changed back," wouldn't Grace Brissenden 
change by the same law? And if Grace Brissenden 
did, wouldn't her husband? Wouldn't the miracle 
take the form of the rejuvenation of that husband? 
Would it, still by the same token, take the form of 
Jier becoming very old, becoming if not as old as her 
husband, at least as old, as one might say, as her- 
self? Would it take the form of her becoming 
dreadfully plain — plain with the plainness of mere 
stout maturity and artificial preservation? And if 
it took this form for the others, which would it take 
for May Server? Would she, at a bound as marked 
as theirs, recover her presence of mind and her lost 
equipment? 

The kind of suspense that these rising questions 
produced for me suffered naturally no drop after 
Mrs. Briss had cut everything short by rustling vo- 
luminously away. She had something to say to me, 

191 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and yet she hadn't; she had nothing to say, and yet 
I felt her to have already launched herself in a state- 
ment. There were other persons I had made uncom- 
fortable without at all intending it, but she at least 
had not suffered from me, and I had no wish that 
she should; according to which she had no press- 
ure to fear. My suspense, in spite of this, remained 
— indeed all the more sensibly that I had suddenly 
lost my discomfort on the subject of redeeming my 
pledge to her. It had somehow left me at a stroke, 
my dread of her calling me, as by our agreement, to 
submit in respect to what we had talked of as the 
identification of the woman. That call had been 
what I looked for from her after she had seen me 
break with Lady John; my first idea then could only 
be that I must come, as it were, to time. It was 
strange that, the next minute, I should find myself 
sure that I was, as I may put it, free; it was at all 
events indisputable that as I stood there watching 
her recede and fairly studying, in my preoccupation, 
her handsome affirmative back and the special 
sweep of her long dress — it was indisputable that, 
on some intimation I could, at the instant, recog- 
nise but not seize, my consciousness was aware of 
having performed a full revolution. If I was free, 
that was what I had been only so short a time be- 
fore, what I had been as I drove, in London, to the 
station. Was this now a foreknowledge that, on 
the morrow, in driving away, I should feel myself 

192 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

restored to that blankness? The state lost was the 
state of exemption from intense obsessions, and the 
state recovered would therefore logically match it. 
If the foreknowledge had thus, as by the stir of the 
air from my friend's whisk of her train, descended 
upon me, my liberation was in a manner what I was 
already tasting. Yet how I also felt, with it, some- 
thing of the threat of a chill to my curiosity ! The 
taste of its being all over, that really sublime suc- 
cess of the strained vision in which I had been living 
for crowded hours — was this a taste that I was sure 
I should particularly enjoy? Marked enough it 
was, doubtless, that even in the stress of perceiving 
myself broken with I ruefully reflected on all the 
more, on the ever so much, I still wanted to know ! 
Well, something of this quantity, in any case, 
would come, since Mrs. Briss did want to speak to 
me. The suspense that remained with me, as I 
have indicated, was the special fresh one she had 
just produced. It fed, for a little, positively, on 
that survey of her fine retreating person to which 
I have confessed that my eyes attached themselves. 
These seconds were naturally few, and yet my mem- 
ory gathers from them something that I can only 
compare, in its present effect, to the scent of a 
strange flower passed rapidly under my nose. I 
seem in other words to recall that I received in that 
brush the very liveliest impression that my whole 
adventure was to yield — the impression that is my 

193 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

reason for speaking of myself as having at the junc- 
ture in question " studied " Mrs. Brissenden's back. 
Study of a profound sort would appear needed in 
truth to account for it. It was as handsome and 
affirmative that she at once met and evaded my 
view, but was not the affirmation (as distinguished 
from the handsomeness, which was a matter of stat- 
ure and mass,) fairly downright and defiant? Didn't 
what I saw strike me as saying straight at me, as 
far as possible, " I am young — I am and I zuill be; 
see, see if I'm not; there, there, there!" — with 
" there's " as insistent and rhythmical as the undu- 
lations of her fleeing presence, as the bejewelled 
nod of her averted brow? If her face had not been 
hidden, should I not precisely have found myself 
right in believing that it looked, exactly, for those 
instants, dreadfully older than it had ever yet had 
to? The answer ideally cynical would have been: 
" Oh, any woman of your resources can look young 
with her back turned! But you've had to turn it 
to make that proclamation." She passed out of the 
room proclaiming, and I did stand there a little de- 
feated, even though with her word for another 
chance at her. Was this word one that she would 
keep? I had got off — yes, to a certainty. But so 
too had not she? 

Naturally, at any rate, I didn't stay planted; and 
though it seemed long it was probably for no great 
time after this that I roamed in my impatience. I 

194 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

was divided between the discourtesy of wishing the 
ladies would go to bed and the apprehension that 
if they did too soon go I might yet lose everything. 
Was Mrs. Briss waiting for more privacy, or was 
she only waiting for a complete escape? Of course, 
even while I asked myself that, I had to remember 
how much I was taking for granted on her part in 
the way of conscious motive. Still, if she had not 
a motive for escaping, why had she not had one, 
five minutes before, for coming to the point with 
me? This inquiry kept me hovering where she 
might at any instant find me, but that was not in- 
consistent with my presently passing, like herself, 
into another room. The first one I entered — there 
were great chains of them at Newmarch — showed 
me once more, at the end opposite the door, the 
object that all day had been, present or absent, most 
in my eyes, and that there now could be no fallacy 
in my recognising. Mrs. Server's unquenchable 
little smile had never yet been so far from quenched 
as when it recognised, on its own side, that I had 
just had time to note how Ford Obert was, for a 
change, taking it in. These two friends of mine 
appeared to have moved together, after the music, 
to the corner in which I should not have felt it as 
misrepresenting the matter to say that I surprised 
them. They owed nothing of the harmony that 
held them — unlike my other couple — to the con- 
straint of a common seat; a small glazed table, a 

195 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

receptacle for minute objects of price, extended it- 
self between them as if it had offered itself as an 
occasion for their drawing toward it a pair of low 
chairs; but their union had nevertheless such an air 
of accepted duration as led it slightly to puzzle me. 
This would have been a reason the more for not 
interrupting it even had I not peculiarly wished 
to respect it. It was grist to my mill somehow that 
something or other had happened as a consequence 
of which Obert had lost the impulse to repeat to me 
his odd invitation to intervene. He gave me no 
notice as I passed; the notice was all from his com- 
panion. It constituted, I felt, on her part, precisely 
as much and precisely as little of an invitation as it 
had constituted at the moment — so promptly fol- 
lowing our arrival — of my first seeing them linked; 
which is but another way of saying that nothing 
in Mrs. Server appeared to acknowledge a lapse. 
It was nearly midnight, but she was again under 
arms; everything conceivable — or perhaps rather 
inconceivable — had passed between us before din- 
ner, but her face was exquisite again in its repudia- 
tion of any reference. 

Any reference, I saw, would have been dif^cult 
to me, had I unluckily been forced to approach her. 
What would have made the rare delicacy of the 
problem was that blankness itself was the most 
direct reference of all. I had, however, as I passed 
her by, a comprehension as inward as that with 

196 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

which I had watched Mrs. Briss's retreat. " What 
shall I see when I next see you? " was what I had 
mutely asked of Mrs. Briss; but " God grant I don't 
see you again at all ! " was the prayer sharply de- 
termined in my heart as I left Mrs. Server behind 
me. I left her behind me for ever, but the prayer 
has not been answered. I did see her again; I see 
her now; I shall see her always; I shall continue 
to feel at moments in my own facial muscles the 
deadly little ache of her heroic grin. With this, 
however, I was not then to reckon, and my simple 
philosophy of the moment could be but to get out 
of the room. The result of that movement was 
that, two minutes later, at another doorway, but 
opening this time into a great corridor, I found my- 
self arrested by a combination that should really 
have counted for me as the least of my precious 
anomalies, but that — as accident happened to pro- 
tect me — I watched, so long as I might, with in- 
tensity. I should in this connection describe my 
eyes as yet again engaging the less scrutable side 
of the human figure, were it not that poor Briss's 
back, now presented to me beside his wife's — for 
these were the elements of the combination — had 
hitherto seemed to me the most eloquent of his 
aspects. It was when he presented his face that 
he looked, each time, older; but it was when he 
showed you, from behind, the singular stoop of his 
shoulders, that he looked oldest. 

197 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

They had just passed the door when I emerged, 
and they receded, at a slow pace and with a kind 
of confidential nearness, down the long avenue of 
the lobby. Her head was always high and her hus- 
band's always low, so that I couldn't be sure — it 
might have been only my fancy — that the contrast 
of this habit was more marked in them than usual. 
If I had known nothing about them I should have 
just unimaginatively said that talk was all on one 
side and attention all on the other. I, of course, 
for that matter, did know nothing about them; yet 
I recall how it came to me, as my extemporised 
shrewdness hung in their rear, that I mustn't think 
anything too grossly simple of what might be tak- 
ing place between them. My position was, in spite 
of myself, that of my having mastered enough pos- 
sibihties to choose from. If one of these might 
be — for her face, in spite of the backward cock of 
her head, was turned to him — that she was looking 
her time of life straight at him and yet making love 
to him with it as hard as ever she could, so another 
was that he had been already so thoroughly got 
back into hand that she had no need of asking 
favours, that she was more splendid than ever, and 
that, the same poor Briss as before his brief ad- 
venture, he was only feeling afresh in his soul, as a 
response to her, the gush of the sacred fount. Pre- 
sumptous choice as to these alternatives failed, on 
my part, in time, let me say, to flower; it »*ose be- 

198 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

fore me in time that, whatever might be, for the 
exposed instant, the deep note of their encounter, 
only one thing concerned me in it : its being wholly 
their own business. So for that I liberally let it go, 
passing into the corridor, but proceeding in the op- 
posite sense and aiming at an issue which I judged 
I should reach before they would turn in their walk. 
I had not, however, reached it before I caught the 
closing of the door furthest from me; at the sound 
of which I looked about to find the Brissendens 
gone. They had not remained for another turn, 
but had taken their course, evidently, back to the 
principal drawing-room, where, no less presumably, 
the procession of the ladies bedward was even then 
forming. Mrs. Briss would fall straight into it, and 
I Jiad accordingly lost her. I hated to appear to 
pursue her, late in the day as it may appear to 
affirm that I put my dignity before my curiosity. 

Free again, at all events, to wait or to wander, 
I lingered a minute where I had stopped — close to 
a wide window, as it happened, that, at this end of 
the passage, stood open to the warm darkness and 
overhung, from no great height, one of the terraces. 
The night was mild and rich, and though the lights 
within were, in deference to the temperature, not 
too numerous, I found the breath of the outer air a 
sudden corrective to the grossness of our lustre and 
the thickness of our medium, our general heavy 
humanity. I felt its taste sweet, and while I leaned 

199 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

for refreshment on the sill I thought of many things. 
One of those that passed before me was the way that 
Newmarch and its hospitalities were sacrificed, after 
all, and much more than smaller circles, to material 
frustrations. We were all so fine and formal, and 
the ladies in particular at once so little and so much 
clothed, so beflounced yet so denuded, that the 
summer stars called to us in vain. We had ignored 
them in our crystal cage, among our tinkling lamps; 
no more free really to alight than if we had been 
dashing in a locked railway-train across a lovely 
land. I remember asking myself if I mightn't still 
take a turn under them, and I remember that on 
appealing to my watch for its sanction I found mid- 
night to have struck. That then was the end, and 
my only real alternatives were bed or the smoking- 
room. The difficulty with bed was that I was in 
no condition to sleep, and the difficulty about re- 
joining the men was that — definitely, yes — there 
was one of them I desired not again to see. I felt 
it with sharpness as I leaned on the sill; I felt it 
with sadness as I looked at the stars; I felt once 
more what I had felt on turning a final back five 
minutes before, so designedly, on Mrs. Server. I 
saw poor Briss as he had just moved away from me, 
and I knevv% as I had known in the other case, that 
my troubled sense would fain feel I had practically 
done with him. It would be well, for aught I could 
do for him, that I should have seen the last of him. 

200 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

What remained with me from that vision of his pac- 
ing there with his wife was the conviction that his 
fate, whatever it was, held him fast. It wouldn't 
let him go, and all I could ask of it now was that 
it should let me. I would go — I was going; if I 
had not had to accept the interval of the night I 
should indeed already have gone. The admoni- 
tions of that moment — only confirmed, I hasten to 
add, by what was still to come — were that I should 
catch in the morning, with energy, an earlier train 
to town than anyone else was likely to take, and 
get off alone by it, bidding farewell for a long day to 
Newmarch. I should be in small haste to come 
back, for I should leave behind me my tangled 
theory, no loose thread of which need I ever again 
pick up, in no stray mesh of which need my foot 
again trip. It was on my way to the place, in fine, 
that my obsession had met me, and it was by re- 
tracing those steps that I should be able to get rid 
of it. Only I must break ofif sharp, must escape 
all reminders by forswearing all returns. 

That was very well, but it would perhaps have 
been better still if I had gone straight to bed. In 
that case I should have broken off sharp — too sharp 
to become aware of something that kept me a min- 
ute longer at the window and that had the instant 
effect of making me wonder if, in the interest of 
observation, I mightn't snap down the electric light 
that, playing just behind me, must show where I 

20I 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

stood. I resisted this impulse and, with the thought 
that my position was in no way compromising, 
chanced being myself observed. I presently saw 
moreover that I was really not in evidence : I could 
take in freely what I had at first not been sure of, 
the identity of the figure stationed just within my 
range, but just out of that of the light projected 
from my window. One of the men of our company 
had come out by himself for a stroll, and the man 
was Gilbert Long. He had paused, I made out, 
in his walk; his back was to the house, and, resting 
on the balustrade of the terrace with a cigarette in 
his lips, he had given way to a sense of the fragrant 
gloom. He moved so little that I was sure — mak- 
ing no turn that would have made me draw back; 
he only smoked slowly in his place and seemed as 
lost in thought as I was lost in my attention to him. 
I scarce knew what this told me; all I felt was that, 
however slight the incident and small the evidence, 
it essentially fitted in. It had for my imagination 
a value, for my theory a price, and it in fact con- 
stituted an impression under the influence of which 
this theory, just impatiently shaken off, perched 
again on my shoulders. It was of the deepest in- 
terest to me to see Long in such detachment, in 
such apparent concentration. These things marked 
and presented him more than any had yet done, 
and placed him more than any yet in relation to 
other matters. They showed him, I thought, as 

202 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

serious, his situation as grave. I couldn't have 
said what they proved, but I was as affected by 
them as if they proved everything. The proof 
simply acted from the instant the vision of him 
alone there in the warm darkness was caught. It 
was just with all that was in the business that he 
zvas, that he had fitfully needed to be, alone. Ner- 
vous and restless after separating, under my eyes, 
from Mrs. Briss, he had wandered off to the smok- 
ing-room, as yet empty; he didn't know what to do 
either, and was incapable of bed and of sleep. He 
had observed the communication of the smoking- 
room with the terrace and had come out into the 
air; this was what suited him, and, with pauses and 
meditations, much, possibly, by this time to turn 
over, he prolonged his soft vigil. But he at last 
moved, and I found myself startled. I gave up 
watching and retraced my course. I felt, none the 
less, fairly humiliated. It had taken but another 
turn of an eye to re-establish all my connections. 

I had not, however, gone twenty steps before I 
met Ford Obert, who had entered the corridor from 
the other end and was, as he immediately let me 
know, on his way to the smoking-room. 

" Is everyone then dispersing? " 

" Some of the men, I think," he said, " are follow- 
ing me; others, I believe — wonderful creatures! — 
have gone to array themselves. Others still, doubt- 
less, have gone to bed." 

203 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"And the ladies?" 

" Oh, they've floated away — soared aloft; to high 
jinks — isn't that the idea? — in their own quarters. 
Don't they too, at these hours, practise sociabil- 
ities of sorts? They make, at any rate, here, 
an extraordinary picture on that great stair- 
case." 

I thought a moment. " I wish I had seen it. 
But I do see it. Yes — splendid. Is the place 
wholly cleared of them? " 

" Save, it struck me, so far as they may have 
left some ' black plume as a token ' " 

" Not, I trust," I returned, " of any ' lie ' their 
* soul hath spoken ! ' But not one of them lin- 
gers? " 

He seemed to wonder. " ' Lingers? ' For 
what? " 

" Oh, I don't know — in this house ! " 

He looked at our long vista, still lighted — ap- 
peared to feel with me our liberal ease, which im- 
plied that unseen powers waited on our good pleas- 
ure and sat up for us. There is nothing like it in 
fact, the lil^eral ease at Newmarch. Yet Obert 
reminded me — if I needed the reminder — that I 
mustn't after all presume on it. " Was one of them 
to linger for youf " 

" Well, since you ask me, it was what I hoped. 
But since you answer for it that my hope has not 
been met, I bow to a superior propriety." 

204 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"You mean you'll come and smoke with me? 
Do then come." 

" What, if I do," I asked with an idea, " will you 
give me? " 

" I'm afraid I can promise you nothing more that 
/ deal in than a bad cigarette." 

" And what then," I went on, " will you take from 
me?" 

He had met my eyes, and now looked at me a 
little with a smile that I thought just conscious. 
" Well, I'm afraid I cant take any more " 

" Of the sort of stufif," I laughed, " you've al- 
ready had? Sorry stuff, perhaps — a poor thing but 
mine own ! Such as it is, I only ask to keep it for 
myself, and that isn't what I meant. I meant what 
flower will you gather, what havoc will you 
play ? " 

" Well? " he said as I hesitated. 

" Among superstitions that I, after all, cherish. 
Mon siege est fait — a great glittering crystal palace. 
How many panes will you reward me for amiably 
sitting up with you by smashing? " 

It might have been my mere fancy — but it was 
my fancy — that he looked at me a trifle harder. 
" How on earth can I tell what you're talking 
about?" 

I waited a moment, then went on : " Did you 
happen to count them?" 

*' Count whom? " 

205 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Why, the ladies as they filed up. Was the 
number there? " 

He gave a jerk of impatience. " Go and see for 
yourself ! " 

Once more I just waited. " But suppose I 
should find Mrs. Server ? " 

" Prowling there on the chance of you? Well — 
I thought she was what you wanted." 

" Then," I returned, " you could tell what I was 
talking about ! " For a moment after this we faced 
each other without more speech, but I presently 
continued : "' You didn't really notice if any lady 
stayed behind? " 

" I think you ask too much of me," he at last 
brought out. " Take care of your ladies, my dear 
man, yourself! Go," he repeated, " and see." 

" Certainly — it's better; but I'll rejoin you in 
three minutes." And while he went his way to the 
smoking-room I proceeded without more delay to 
assure myself, performing in the opposite sense the 
journey I had made ten minutes before. It was 
extraordinary what the sight of Long alone in the 
outer darkness had done for me : my expression of 
it would have been that it had put me " on " again 
at the moment of my decidedly feeling myself off. 
I believed that if I hadn't seen him I could now 
have gone to bed without seeing Mrs. Briss; but 
my renewed impression had suddenly made the dif- 
ference. If that was the way he struck me, how 

206 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

might not, if I could get at her, she? And she 
might, after all, in the privacy at last offered us by 
empty rooms, be waiting for me. I went through 
them all, however, only to find them empty indeed. 
In conformity with the large allowances of every 
sort that were the law of Newmarch, they were still 
open and lighted, so that if I had believed in Mrs. 
Briss's reappearance I might conveniently, on the 
spot, have given her five minutes more. I am not 
sure, for that matter, that I didn't. I remember at 
least wondering if I mightn't ring somewhere for a 
servant and cause a question to be sent up to her. 
I didn't ring, but I must have lingered a little on 
the chance of the arrival of servants to extinguish 
lights and see the house safe. They had not ar- 
rived, however, by the time I again felt that I must 
give up. 



207 



XI 



I GAVE up by going, decidedly, to the smoking- 
room, where several men had gathered and 
where Obert, a little apart from them, was in 
charmed communion with the bookshelves. They 
are wonderful, everywhere, at Newmarch, the book- 
shelves, but he put a volume back as he saw me 
come in, and a moment later, when we were seated, 
I said to him again, as a recall of our previous pas- 
sage, " Then you could tell what I was talking 
about ! " And I added, to complete my reference, 
" Since you thought Mrs. Server was the person 
whom, when I stopped you, I was sorry to learn 
from you I had missed." 

His momentary silence appeared to admit the 
connection I established. " Then you find you 
have missed her? She wasn't there for you? " 

"There's no one 'there for me '; so that I fear 
that if you weren't, as it happens, here for me, my 
amusement would be quite at an end. I had, in 
fact," I continued, " already given it up as lost when 
I came upon you, a while since, in conversation with 
the lady we've named. At that, I confess, my pros- 

208 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

pects gave something of a flare. I said to myself 
that since your interest hadn't then wholly dropped, 
why, even at the worst, should mine? Yours zuas 
mine, wasn't it? for a Httle, this morning. Or was 
it mine that was yours? We exchanged, at any 
rate, some lively impressions. Only, before we had 
done, your effort dropped or your discretion inter- 
vened : you gave up, as none of your business, the 
question that had suddenly tempted us." 

" And you gave it up too," said my friend. 

" Yes, and it was on the idea that it was mine as 
little as yours that we separated." 

" Well then? " He kept his eyes, with his head 
thrown back, on the warm bindings, admirable for 
old gilt and old colour, that covered the opposite 
wall. 

" Well then, if I've correctly gathered that 
you're, in spite of our common renunciation, still in- 
terested, I confess to you that I am. I took my de- 
tachment too soon for granted. I haven't been 
detached. I'm not, hang me ! detached now. And 
it's all because you were originally so suggestive." 

"Originally?" 

" Why, from the moment we met here yesterday 
— the moment of my first seeing you with Mrs. Ser- 
ver. The look you gave me then was really the 
beginning of everything. Everything " — and I 
spoke now with real conviction — " was traceably to 
spring from it." 

209 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" What do you mean," he asked, " by every- 
thing? " 

" Well, this failure of detachment. What you 
said to me as we were going up yesterday afternoon 
to dress — what you said to me then is responsible 
for it. And since it comes to that," I pursued, " I 
make out for myself now that you're not detached 
either — unless, that is, simply detached from mc. I 
had indeed a suspicion of that as I passed through 
the room there." 

He smoked through another pause. " You've 
extraordinary notions of responsibility." 

I watched him a moment, but he only stared at 
the books without looking round. Something in 
his voice had made me more certain, and my cer- 
tainty made me laugh. " I see you are serious ! " 

But he went on quietly enough. " You've ex- 
traordinary notions of responsibility. I deny alto- 
gether mine." 

" You are serious — you are! " I repeated with a 
gaiety that I meant as inoffensive and that I believe 
remained so. " But no matter. You're no worse 
than I." 

" I'm clearly, by your own story, not half so bad. 
But, as you say, no matter. I don't care." 

I ventured to keep it up. " Oh, don't you? " 

His good nature was proof. " I don't care." 

" Then why didn't you so much as look at me a 
while ago? " 

2IO 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"Didn't I look at you?" 

" You know perfectly you didn't. Mrs. Server 
did — with her unutterable intensity; making me feel 
afresh, by the way, that I've never seen a Vvoman 
compromise herself so little by proceedings so 
compromising. But though you saw her inten- 
sity, it never diverted you for an instant from your 
own." 

He lighted before he answered this a fresh cigar- 
ette. " A man engaged in talk with a charming 
woman scarcely selects that occasion for winking 
at somebody else." 

" You mean he contents himself with winking at 
herf My dear fellow, that wasn't enough for you 
yesterday, and it wouldn't have been enough for 
you this morning, among the impressions that led 
to our last talk. It was just the fact that you did 
wink, that you had winked, at me that wound 
me up." 

" And what about the fact that you had winked 
at mef Your winks — come " — Obert laughed — 
" are portentous! " 

" Oh, if we recriminate," I cheerfully said after a 
moment, '' we agree." 

" I'm not so sure," he returned, " that we agree." 

" Ah, then, if we differ it's still more interesting. 
Because, you know, we didn't differ either yester- 
day or this morning." 

Without hurry or flurry, but with a decent con- 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

fusion, his thoughts went back. *' I thought you 
said just now we did — recognising, as you ought, 
that you were keen about a chase of which I washed 
my hands." 

" No — I wasn't keen. You've just mentioned 
that you remember my giving up. I washed my 
hands too." 

It seemed to leave him with the moral of this. 
" Then, if our hands are clean, what are we talking 
about?" 

I turned, on it, a little more to him, and looked 
at him so long that he had at last to look at me; 
with which, after holding his eyes another moment, 
I made my point. *' Our hands are not clean." 

" Ah, speak for your own ! " — and as he moved 
back I might really have thought him uneasy. 
There was a hint of the same note in the way he 
went on: "I assure you I decline all responsibility. 
I see the responsibility as quite beautifully yours." 

'' Well," I said, " I only want to be fair. You 
were the first to bring it out that she was changed." 

" Well, she isn't changed ! " said my friend with 
an almost startling effect, for me, of suddenness. 
" Or rather," he immediately and incongruously 
added, " she is. She's changed back." 

" ' Back '? " It made me stare. 

" Back," he repeated with a certain sharpness and 
as if to have done at last, for himself, with the mud- 
dle of it. 

212 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

But there was that in me that could let him see 
he had far from done; and something, above all, 
told me now that he absolutely mustn't have before 
I had. I quickly moreover saw that I must, with 
an art, make him want not to. " Back to what she 
was when you painted her? " 

He had to think an instant for this. " No — not 
quite to that." 

"To what then?" 

He tried in a manner to oblige me. " To some- 
thing else." 

It seemed so, for my thought, the gleam of some- 
thing that fitted, that I was almost afraid of quench- 
ing the gleam by pressure. I must then get every- 
thing I could from him without asking too much. 
" You don't quite know to what else? " 

" No — I don't quite know." But there was a 
sound in it, this time, that I took as the hint of a 
wish to know — almost a recognition that I might 
help him. 

I helped him accordingly as I could and, I may 
add, as far as the positive flutter he had stirred in 
me suffered. It fitted — it fitted ! " If her change 
is to something other, I suppose then a change back 
is not quite the exact name for it." 

" Perhaps not." I fairly thrilled at his taking the 
suggestion as if it were an assistance. " She isn't 
at any rate what I thought her yesterday." 

It was amazing into what depths this dropped for 
213 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

me and with what possibilities it mingled. " I re- 
member what you said of her yesterday." 

I drew him on so that I brought back for him the 
very words he had used. " She was so beastly un- 
happy." And he used them now visibly not as a 
remembrance of what he had said, but for the con- 
trast of the fact with what he at present perceived; 
so that the value this gave for me to what he at 
present perceived was immense. 

" And do you mean that that's gone? " 

He hung fire, however, a little as to saying so 
much what he meant, and while he waited he again 
looked at me. "What do you mean? Don't you 
think so yourself? " 

I laid my hand on his arm and held him a moment 
with a grip that betrayed, I daresay, the efifort in 
me to keep my thoughts together and lose not a 
thread. It betrayed at once, doubtless, the danger 
of that failure and the sharp foretaste of success. 
I remember that with it, absolutely, I struck myself 
as knowing again the joy of the intellectual mastery 
of things unamenable, that joy of determining, al- 
most of creating results, which I have already men- 
tioned as an exhilaration attached to some of my 
plunges of insight. " It would take long to tell you 
what I mean." 

The tone of it made him fairly watch me as I had 
been watching him. " Well, haven't we got the 
whole night? " 

214 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Oh, it would take more than the whole night — 
even if we had it ! " 

" By which you suggest that we haven't it? " 

" No — we haven't it. I want to get away." 

" To go to bed? I thought you were so keen." 

" I am keen. Keen is no word for it. I don't 
want to go to bed. I want to get away." 

" To leave the house — in the middle of the 
night? " 

" Yes — absurd as it may seem. You excite me 
too much. You don't know what you do to 
me." 

He continued to look at me; then he gave a laugh 
which was not the contradiction, but quite the at- 
testation, of the effect produced on him by my grip. 
If I had wanted to hold him I held him. It only 
came to me even that I held him too much. I felt 
this in fact with the next thing he said. " If you're 
too excited, then, to be coherent now, will you tell 
me to-morrow? " 

I took time myself now to relight. Ridiculous 
as it may sound, I had my nerves to steady; which 
is a proof, surely, that for real excitement there are 
no such adventures as intellectual ones. " Oh, to- 
morrow I shall be off in space ! " 

" Certainly we shall neither of us be here. But 
can't we arrange, say, to meet in town, or even to go 
up together in such conditions as will enable us to 
talk? " 

215 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I patted his arm again. " Thank you for your 
patience. It's really good of you. Who knows if 
I shall be alive to-morrow? We arc meeting. We 
do talk." 

But with all I had to think of I must have fallen, 
on this, into the deepest of silences, for the next 
thing I remember is his returning: "We don't!" 
I repeated my gesture of reassurance, I conveyed 
that I should be with him again in a minute, and 
presently, while he gave me time, he came back to 
something of his own. " My wink, at all events, 
would have been nothing for any question between 
us, as I've just said, without yours. That's what I 
call your responsibility. It was, as we put the mat- 
ter, the torch of your analogy " 

" Oh, the torch of my analogy ! " 

I had so groaned it — as if for very ecstasy — that 
it pulled him up, and I could see his curiosity as in- 
deed reafifected. But he went on with a coherency 
that somewhat admonished me : " It was your mak- 
ing me, as I told you this morning, think over what 
you had said about Brissenden and his wife : it was 
that " 

" That made you think over " — I took him 
straight up — " what you yourself had said about 
our troubled lady? Yes, precisely. That was the 
torch of my analogy. What I showed you in the 
one case seemed to tell you what to look for in the 
other. You thought it over. I accuse you of noth- 

216 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ing worse than of having thought it over. But you 
see what thinking it over does for it." 

The way I said this appeared to amuse him. " I 
see what it does for you! " 

" No, you don't ! Not at all yet. That's just the 
embarrassment." 

" Just whose? " If I had thanked him for his 
patience he showed that he deserved it. " Just 
yours? " 

"Well, say mine. But when you do !" 

And I paused as for the rich promise of it. 

" When I do see where you are, you mean? " 

" The only difficulty is whether you can see. But 
we must try. You've set me whirling round, but 
we must go step by step. Oh, but it's all in your 
germ ! " — I kept that up. " If she isn't now beastly 
unhappy " 

" She's beastly happy? " he broke in, getting 
firmer hold, if not of the real impression he had just 
been gathering under my eyes, then at least of 
something he had begun to make out that my argu- 
ment required. " Well, that is the way I see her 
difference. Her difference, I mean," he added, in 
his evident wish to work with me, " her difiference 
from her other difference ! There ! " He laughed 
as if, also, he had found himself fairly fantastic. 
" Isn't that clear for you? " 

" Crystalline — for me. But that's because I know 
why." 

217 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I can see again now the long look that, on this, 
he gave me. I made out already much of what was 
in it. " So then do I ! " 

" But how in the world ? I know, for my- 
self, how I know." 

" So then do I," he after a moment repeated. 

"And can you tell me?" 

" Certainly. But what I've already named to 
you — the torch of your analogy." 

I turned this over. " You've made evidently an 
admirable use of it. But the wonderful thing is 
that you seem to have done so without having all 
the elements." 

He on his side considered. " What do you call 
all the elements? " 

" Oh, it would take me long to tell you ! " I 
couldn't help laughing at the comparative simplicity 
with which he asked it. " That's the sort of thing 
we just now spoke of taking a day for. At any 
rate, such as they are, these elements," I went 
on, " I believe myself practically in possession 
of them. But what I don't quite see is how you 
can be." 

Well, he was able to tell me. " Why in the world 
shouldn't your analogy have put me? " He spoke 
with gaiety, but with lucidity. *' I'm not an idiot 
either." 

" I see." But there was so much ! 

" Did you think I zvasF " he amiably asked. 
218 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" No. I see," I repeated. Yet I didn't, really, 
fully; which he presently perceived. 

" You made me think of your view of the Bris- 
senden pair till I could think of nothing else." 

" Yes— yes," I said. " Go on." 

" Well, as you had planted the theory in me, it 
began to bear fruit. I began to watch them. I 
continued to watch them. I did nothing but watch 
them." 

The sudden lowering of his voice in this confes- 
sion — as if it had represented a sort of darkening of 
his consciousness — again amused me. " You too? 
How then we've been occupied ! For I, you see, 
have watched — or had, until I found you just now 
with Mrs. Server — everyone, everything but you." 

" Oh, I've watched you," said Ford Obert as if he 
had then perhaps after all the advantage of me. " I 
admit that I made you out for myself to be back on 
the scent; for I thought I made you out bafifled." 

To learn whether I really had been was, I saw, 
what he would most have liked ; but I also saw that 
he had, as to this, a scruple about asking me. What 
I most saw, however, was that to tell him I should 
have to understand. " What scent do you allude 
to?" 

He smiled as if I might have fancied I could fence. 
" Why, the pursuit of the identification that's none 
of our business — the identification of her lover." 

" Ah, it's as to that," I instantly replied, " you've 
219 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

judged me baffled? I'm afraid," I almost as quick- 
ly added, " that I must admit I have been. Luckily, 
at all events, it is none of our business." 

" Yes," said my friend, amused on his side, 
" nothing's our business that we can't find out. I 
saw you hadn't found him. And what," Obert con- 
tinued, " does he matter now? " 

It took but a moment to place me for seeing that 
my companion's conviction on this point was a con- 
viction decidedly to respect; and even that amount 
of hesitation was but the result of my wondering 
how he had reached it. "What, indeed?" I 
promptly replied. " But how did you see I had 
failed?" 

" By seeing that I myself had. For I've been 
looking too. He isn't here," said Ford Obert. 

Delighted as I was that he should believe it, I was 
yet struck by the complacency of his confidence, 
which connected itself again with my observation 
of their so recent colloquy. " Oh, for you to be so 
sure, has Mrs. Server squared you? " 

" Is he here? " he for all answer to this insistently 
asked. 

I faltered but an instant. " No; he isn't here. 
It's no thanks to one's scruples, but perhaps it's 
lucky for one's manners. I speak at least for mine. 
If you've watched," I pursued, " you've doubtless 
sufficiently seen what has already become of mine. 
He isn't here, at all events," I repeated, " and we 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

must do without his identity. What, in fact, are we 
showing each other," I asked, " but that we have 
done without it? " 

" / have ! " my friend declared with supreme 
frankness and with something of the note, as I was 
obHged to recognise, of my own constructive joy. 
" I've done perfectly without it." 

I saw in fact that he had, and it struck me really 
as wonderful. But I controlled the expression of 
my wonder. " So that if you spoke therefore just 
now of watching them " 

" I meant of course " — he took it straight up — 
" watching the Brissendens. And naturally, above 
all," he as quickly subjoined, " the wife." 

I was now full of concurrence. " Ah, naturally, 
above all, the wife." 

So far as was required it encouraged him. " A 
woman's lover doesn't matter — doesn't matter at 
least to anyone but himself, doesn't matter to you 
or to me or to her — when once she has given him 
up. 

It made me, this testimony of his observation, 
show, in spite of my having by this time so counted 
on it, something of the vivacity of my emotion. 
" She has given him up? " 

But the surprise with which he looked round put 
me back on my guard. " Of what else then are we 
talking? " 

" Of nothing else, of course," I stammered. 

221 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" But the way you see ! " I found my refuge 

in the gasp of my admiration. 

" I do see. But " — he would come back to that 
— " only through your having seen first. You gave 
me the pieces. I've but put them together. You 
gave me the Brissendens — bound hand and foot; 
and I've but made them, in that sorry state, pull me 
through. I've blown on my torch, in other words, 
till, flaring and smoking, it has guided me, through 
a magnificent chiaroscuro of colour and shadow, 
out into the light of day." 

I was really dazzled by his image, for it repre- 
sented his personal work. " You've done more 
than I, it strikes me — and with less to do it with. 
If I gave you the Brissendens I gave you all I 
had." 

" But all you had was immense, my dear man. 
The Brissendens are immense." 

"Of course the Brissendens are immense! If 
they hadn't been immense they wouldn't have been 
— nothing would have been — anything." Then 
after a pause, " Your image is splendid," I went 
on — " your being out of the cave. But what is it 
exactly," I insidiously threw out, " that you call the 
Might of day'?" 

I remained a moment, however, not sure whether 
I had been too subtle or too simple. He had an- 
other of his cautions. " What do you ? " 

But I was determined to make him give it me 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

all himself, for it was from my not prompting him 
that its value would come. " You tell me," I ac- 
cordingly rather crudely pleaded, " first." 

It gave us a moment during which he so looked 
as if I asked too much, that I had a fear of losing 
all. He even spoke with some impatience. " If 
you really haven't found it for yourself, you know. 
I scarce see what you can have found." 

Then I had my inspiration. I risked an approach 
to roughness, and all the more easily that my words 
were strict truth. " Oh, don't be afraid — greater 
things than yours ! " 

It succeeded, for it played upon his curiosity, and 
he visibly imagined that, with impatience con- 
trolled, he should learn what these things were. He 
relaxed, he responded, and the next moment I was 
in all but full enjoyment of the piece wanted to make 
all my other pieces right — right because of that 
special beauty in my scheme through which the 
whole depended so on each part and each part so 
guaranteed the whole. " What I call the light of 
day is the sense I've arrived at of her vision." 

" Her vision? " — I just balanced in the air. 

" Of what they have in common. His — poor 
chap's — extraordinary situation too." 

" Bravo ! And you see in that ? " 

" What, all these hours, has touched, fascinated, 
drawn her. It has been an instinct with her." 

" Bravissimo ! " 

223 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It saw him, my approval, safely into port. " The 
instinct of sympathy, pity — the response to fellow- 
ship in misery; the sight of another fate as strange, 
as monstrous as her own." 

I couldn't help jumping straight up — I stood be- 
fore him. " So that whoever may have been the 
man, the man now, the actual man " 

" Oh," said Obert, looking, luminous and 
straight, up at me from his seat, " the man now, 

the actual man ! " But he stopped short, with 

his eyes suddenly quitting me and his words becom- 
ing a formless ejaculation. The door of the room, 
to which my back was turned, had opened, and I 
quickly looked round. It was Brissenden himself 
who, to my supreme surprise, stood there, with 
rapid inquiry in his attitude and face. I saw, as 
soon as he caught mine, that I was what he wanted, 
and, immediately excusing myself for an instant to 
Obert, I anticipated, by moving across the room, 
the need, on poor Briss's part, of my further demon- 
stration. My whole sense of the situation blazed 
up at the touch of his presence, and even before I 
reached him it had rolled over me in a prodigious 
wave that I had lost nothing whatever. I can't be- 
gin to say how the fact of his appearance crowned 
the communication my interlocutor had just made 
me, nor in what a bright confusion of many things 
I found myself facing poor Briss. One of these 
things was precisely that he had never been so much 

224 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

poor Briss as at this moment. That ministered to 
the confusion as well as to the brightness, for if his 
being there at all renewed my sources and replen- 
ished my current — spoke all, in short, for my gain — 
so, on the other hand, in the light of what I had just 
had from Obert, his particular aspect was some- 
thing of a shock. I can't present this especial im- 
pression better than by the mention of my instant 
certitude that what he had come for was to bring 
me a message and that somehow — yes, indubitably 
— this circumstance seemed to have placed him 
again at the very bottom of his hole. It was down 
in that depth that he let me see him — it was out of 
it that he delivered himself. Poor Briss! poor 
Briss! — I had asked myself before he spoke with 
what kindness enough I could meet him. Poor 
Briss ! poor Briss ! — I am not even now sure that I 
didn't first meet him by that irrepressible murmur. 
It was in it all for me that, thus, at midnight, he 
had traversed on his errand the length of the great 
dark house. I trod with him, over the velvet and 
the marble, through the twists and turns, among 
the glooms and glimmers and echoes, every inch 
of the way, and I don't know what humiliation, for 
him, was constituted there, between us, by his long 
pilgrimage. It was the final expression of his sac- 
rifice. 

" My wife has something to say to you." 
" Mrs. Briss? Good! " — and I could only hope 
225 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the candour of my surprise was all I tried to make 
it. " Is she with you there? " 

" No, but she has asked me to say to you that 
if you'll presently be in the drawing-room she'll 
come." 

Who could doubt, as I laid my hand on his shoul- 
der, fairly patting it, in spite of myself, for applause 
— who could doubt where I would presently be? 
" It's most uncommonly good of both of you." 

There was something in his inscrutable service 
that, making him almost august, gave my dissimu- 
lated eagerness the sound of a heartless compliment. 
/ stood for the hollow chatter of the vulgar world, 
and he — oh, he was as serious as he was conscious ; 
which was enough. *' She says you'll know what 
she wishes — and she was sure I'd find you here. So 
I may tell her you'll come? " 

His courtesy half broke my heart. " Why, my 

dear man, with all the pleasure ! So many 

thousand thanks. I'll be with her." 

" Thanks to you. She'll be down. Good-night." 
He looked round the room — at the two or three 
clusters of men, smoking, engaged, contented, on 
their easy seats and among their popped corks; he 
looked over an instant at Ford Obert, whose eyes, 
I thought, he momentarily held. It was absolutely 
as if, for me, he were seeking such things — out of 
what was closing over him — for the last time. Then 
he turned again to the door, which, just not to fail 

226 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

humanly to accompany him a step, I had opened. 
On the other side of it I took leave of him. The 
passage, though there was a Hght in the distance, 
was darker than the smoking-room, and I had 
drawn the door to. 

" Good-night, Brissenden. I shall be gone to- 
morrow before you show." 

I shall never forget the way that, struck by my 
word, he let his white face fix me in the dusk. 
"'Show'? What do 1 show? " 

I had taken his hand for farewell, and, inevitably 
laughing, but as the falsest of notes, I gave it a 
shake. " You show nothing ! You're magnifi- 
cent." 

He let me keep his hand while things un- 
spoken and untouched, unspeakable and untouch- 
able, everything that had been between us in the 
wood a few hours before, were between us again. 
But so we could only leave them, and, with a short, 
sharp " Good-bye ! " he completely released himself. 
With my hand on the latch of the closed door I 
watched a minute his retreat along the passage, and 
I remember the reflection that, before rejoining 
Obert, I made on it. I seemed perpetually, at 
Newmarch, to be taking his measure from behind. 

Ford Obert has since told me that when I came 
back to him there were tears in my eyes, and I didn't 
know at the moment how much the words with 
which he met me took for granted my conscious- 

227 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ness of them. " He looks a hundred years 
old!" 

" Oh, but you should see his shoulders, always, 
as he goes off ! Two centuries — ten ! Isn't it 
amazing? " 

It was so amazing that, for a little, it made us 
reciprocally stare. " I should have thought," he 
said, " that he would have been on the con- 
trary " 

" Visibly rejuvenated? So should I. I must 
make it out," I added. " I shair 

But Obert, with less to go upon, couldn't wait. 
It was wonderful, for that matter — and for all I had 
to go upon — how I myself could. I did so, at this 
moment, in my refreshed intensity, by the help of 
confusedly lighting another cigarette, which I 
should have no time to smoke. " I should have 
thought," my friend continued, " that he too might 
have changed back." 

I took in, for myself, so much more of it than 
I could say ! " Certainly. You wouldn't have 
thought he would have changed forward." Then 
with an impulse that bridged over an abyss of con- 
nections I jumped to another place. " Was what 
you most saw while you were there with her — was 
this that her misery, the misery you first phrased 
to me, has dropped? " 

" Dropped, yes." He was clear about it. " I 
called her beastly unhappy to you though I even 

228 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

then knew that beastly unhappiness wasn't quite 
all of it. It was part of it, it was enough of it; for 
she was — well, no doubt you could tell me. Just 
now, at all events " — and recalling, reflecting, de- 
ciding, he used, with the strongest effect, as he so 
often did in painting, the simplest term — " just now 
she's all right." 

"All right?" 

He couldn't know how much more than was pos- 
sible my question gave him to answer. But he 
answered it on what he had; he repeated: "All 
right." 

I wondered, in spite of the comfort I took, as I had 
more than once in life had occasion to take it be- 
fore, at the sight of the painter-sense deeply ap- 
plied. My wonder came from the fact that Lady 
John had also found Mrs. Server all right, and Lady 
John had a vision as closed as Obert's was open. It 
didn't suit my book for both these observers to have 
been afTected in the same way. " You mean you 
saw nothing whatever in her that was the least bit 
strange? " 

" Oh, I won't say as much as that. But nothing 
that was more strange than that she should be — 
well, after all, all right." 

" All there, eh? " I after an instant risked. 

I couldn't put it to him more definitely than that, 
though there was a temptation to try to do so. 
For Obert to have found her all there an hour or 

229 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

two after I had found her all absent, made me again, 
in my nervousness, feel even now a trifle menaced. 
Things had, from step to step, to hang together, 
and just here they seemed — with all allowances — to 
hang a little apart. My whole superstructure, I 
could only remember, reared itself on my view of 
Mrs. Server's condition; but it was part of my pre- 
dicament — really equal in its way to her own — that 
I couldn't without dishonouring myself give my 
interlocutor a practical lead. The question of her 
happiness was essentially subordinate; what I stood 
or fell by was that of her faculty. But I couldn't, 
on the other hand — and remain " straight " — insist 
to my friend on the whereabouts of this stolen 
property. If he hadn't missed it in her for himself 
I mightn't put him on the track of it; since, with 
the demonstration he had before my eyes received 
of the rate at which Long was, as one had to call it, 
intellectually living, nothing would be more natural 
than that he should make the cases fit. Now my 
personal problem, unaltered in the least particular 
by anything, was for me to have worked to the end 
without breathing in another ear that Long had 
been her lover. That was the only thing in the 
whole business that was simple. It made me cling 
an instant the more, both for bliss and bale, to the 
bearing of this fact of Obert's insistence. Even as 
a sequel to his vision of her change, almost every- 
thing was wrong for her being all right except the 

230 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

one fact of my recent view, from the window, of the 
man unnamed. I saw him again sharply in these 
seconds, and to notice how he still kept clear of our 
company was almost to add certitude to the pre- 
sumption of his rare reasons. Mrs. Server's being 
now, by a wonderful turn, all right would at least 
decidedly offer to these reasons a basis. It would 
be something Long's absence would fit. It would 
supply ground, in short, for the possibility that, by 
a process not less wonderful, he himself was all 
wrong. If he zvas all wrong my last impression of 
him would be amply accounted for. If he was all 
wrong — if he, in any case, felt himself going so — 
what more consequent than that he should have 
wished to hide it, and that the most immediate way 
for this should have seemed to him, markedly gre- 
garious as he usually was, to keep away from the 
smokers? It came to me unspeakably that he zvas 
still hiding it and was keeping away. How, ac- 
cordingly, must he not — and must not Mrs. Briss — 
have been in the spirit of this from the moment 
that, while I talked with Lady John, the sight of 
these two seated together had given me its mes- 
sage! But Obert's answer to my guarded chal- 
lenge had meanwhile come. " Oh, when a woman's 

so clever ! " 

That was all, with its touch of experience and its 
hint of philosophy; but it was stupefying. She was 
already then positively again " so clever? " This 

231 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

was really more than I could as yet provide an ex- 
planation for, but I was pressed; Brissenden would 
have reached his wife's room again, and I tempo- 
rised. " It was her cleverness that held you so that 
when I passed you couldn't look at me? " 

He looked at me at present well enough, " I 
knew you were passing, but I wanted precisely to 
mark for you the difiference. If you really want to 
know," the poor man confessed, " I was a little 
ashamed of myself. I had given her away to you, 
you know, rather, before." 

" And you were bound you wouldn't do it 
again? " 

He smiled in his now complete candour. " Ah, 
there was no reason." Then he used, happily, to 
right himself, my own expression. " She was all 
there." 

" I see — I see." Yet I really didn't see enough 
not to have for an instant to turn away. 

" Where are you going? " he asked. 

" To do what Brissenden came to me for." 

" But I don't know, you see, what Brissenden 
came to you for." 

" Well, with a message. She was to have seen 
me this evening, but, as she gave me no chance, 
I was afraid I had lost it and that, so rather awk- 
wardly late, she didn't venture. But what he ar- 
rived for just now, at her request, was to say she 
does venture." 

232 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

My companion stared. " At this extraordinary 
hour?" 

" Ah, the hour," I laughed, " is no more ex- 
traordinary than any other part of the business : no 
more so, for instance, than this present talk of yours 
and mine. What part of the business isn't ex- 
traordinary? If it is, at all events, remarkably late, 
that's her fault." 

Yet he not unnaturally, in spite of my explana- 
tion, continued to wonder, " And — a — where is it 
then you meet? " 

" Oh, in the drawing-room or the hall. So 
good-night." 

He got up to it, moving with me to the door; but 
his mystification, little as I could, on the whole, 
soothe it, still kept me. " The household sits up 
for you? " 

I wondered myself, but found an assurance. 
" She must have squared the household ! And it 
won't probably take us very long." 

His mystification frankly confessed itself, at this, 
plain curiosity. The ground of such a conference, 
for all the point I had given his ingenuity, simply 
baffled him. " Do you mean you propose to dis- 
cuss with her ? " 

" My dear fellow," I smiled with my hand on the 
door, " it's she — don't you see? — who proposes." 

" But what in the world ? " 

" Oh, that I shall have to wait to tell you." 

233 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" With all the other things? " His face, while he 
sounded mine, seemed to say that I must then take 
his expectation as serious. But it seemed to say 
also that he was — definitely, yes — more at a loss 
than consorted with being quite sure of me. 

"Well, it will make a lot, really !" But he 

broke ofif. " You do," he sighed with an effort at 
resignation, " know more than I! " 

" And haven't I admitted that? " 

"I'll be hanged if you dont know who he is!" 
the poor fellow, for all answer, now produced. 

He said it as if I had, after all, not been playing 
fair, and it made me for an instant hesitate. " No, 
I really don't know. But it's exactly what I shall 
perhaps now learn." 

" You mean that what she has proposed is to tell 
you? " 

His darkness had so deepened that I saw only 
now what I should have seen sooner — the miscon- 
ception that, in my excessive estimate of the dis- 
tance he had come with me, I had not at first 
caught. But it was a misconception that only en- 
riched his testimony; it involved such a conviction 
of the new link between our two sacrificed friends 
that it immediately constituted for me the strongest 
light he would, in our whole talk, have thrown. 
Yes, he had not yet thrown so much as in this er- 
roneous supposition of the source of my summons. 
It took me of course, at the same time, but a few 

234 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

seconds to remind myself again of the innumerable 
steps he had necessarily missed. His question 
meanwhile, rightly applied by my own thought, 
brought back to that thought, by way of answer, 
an immense suggestion, which moreover, for him 
too, was temporarily answer enough. " She'll tell 
me who he won't have been ! " 

He looked vague. " Ah, but that " 

" That," I declared, " will be luminous." 
He made it out. " As a sign, you think, that he 
must be the very one she denies? " 

" The very one ! " I laughed; and I left him under 
this simple and secure impression that my appoint- 
ment was with Mrs. Server. 



235 



XII 

T WENT from one room to the other, but to find 
-■- only, at first, as on my previous circuit, a 
desert on which the sun had still not set. Mrs. 
Brissenden was nowhere, but the whole place wait- 
ed as we had left it, with seats displaced and flowers 
dispetalled, a fan forgotten on a table, a book laid 
down upon a chair. It came over me as I looked 
about that if she had " squared " the household, so 
large an order, as they said, was a sign sufficient 
of what I was to have from her. I had quite rather 
it were her doing — not mine; but it showed with 
eloquence that she had after all judged some effort 
or other to be worth her while. Her renewed delay 
moreover added to my impatience of mind in re- 
spect to the nature of this effort by striking me as 
already part of it. What, I asked myself, could be 
so much worth her while as to have to be paid for 
by so much apparent reluctance? But at last I saw 
her through a vista of open doors, and as I forth- 
with went to her — she took no step to meet me — 
I was doubtless impressed afresh with the " pull " 
that in social intercourse a woman always has. She 
was able to assume on the spot by mere attitude 

236 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and air the appearance of having been ready and 
therefore inconvenienced. Oh, I saw soon enough 
that she was ready and that one of the forms of her 
readiness would be precisely to offer herself as hav- 
ing acted entirely to oblige me — to give me, as a 
sequel to what had already passed between us, the 
opportunity for which she had assured me I should 
thank her before I had done with her. Yet, as I 
felt sure, at the same time, that she had taken a line, 
I was curious as to how, in her interest, our situa- 
tion could be worked. What it had originally left 
us with was her knowing I was wrong. I had prom- 
ised her, on my honour, to be candid, but even if I 
were disposed to cease to contest her identification 
of Mrs. Server I was scarce to be looked to for such 
an exhibition of gratitude as might be held to repay 
her for staying so long out of bed. There were in 
short elements in the business that I couldn't quite 
clearly see handled as favours to me. Her dress 
gave, with felicity, no sign whatever of preparation 
for the night, and if, since our last words, she had 
stood with any anxiety whatever before her glass, 
it had not been to remove a jewel or to alter the 
place of a flower. She was as much under arms as 
she had been on descending to dinner — as fresh in 
her array as if that banquet were still to come. She 
met me in fact as admirably — that was the truth 
that covered every other — as if she had been able 
to guess the most particular curiosity with which, 

237 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

from my end of the series of rooms, I advanced 
upon her. 

A part of the mixture of my thoughts during 
these seconds had been the possibiHty — absurd, 
preposterous though it looks when phrased here — 
of some change in her person that would corre- 
spond, for me to the other changes I had had such 
keen moments of flattering myself I had made out. 
I had just had them over in the smoking-room, 
some of these differences, and then had had time to 
ask myself if I were not now to be treated to the 
vision of the greatest, the most wonderful, of all. I 
had already, on facing her, after my last moments 
with Lady John, seen difference peep out at me, and 
I had seen the impression of it confirmed by what 
had afterwards happened. It had been in her way 
of turning from me after that brief passage; it had 
been in her going up to bed without seeing me 
again; it had been once more in her thinking, for 
reasons of her own, better of that; and it had been 
most of all in her sending her husband down to 
me. Well, wouldn't it finally be, still more than 

most of all ? But I scarce had known, at this 

point, what grossness or what fineness of material 
correspondence to forecast. I only had waited 
there with these general symptoms so present that 
almost any further development of them occurred 
to me as conceivable. So much as this was true, 
but I was after a moment to become aware of some- 

238 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

thing by which I was as strongly affected as if I 
had been quite unprepared. Yes, Hterally, that 
final note, in the smoking-room, the note struck in 
Obert's ejaculation on poor Briss's hundred years, 
had failed to achieve for me a worthy implication. 
I was forced, after looking at Grace Brissenden a 
minute, to recognise that my imagination had not 
risen to its opportunity. The full impression took 
a minute — a minute during which she said nothing; 
then it left me deeply and above all, as I felt, dis- 
cernibly conscious of the prodigious thing, the 
thing, I had not thought of. This it was that gave 
her such a beautiful chance not to speak: she was 
so quite sufficiently occupied with seeing what I 
hadn't thought of, and with seeing me, to make up 
for lost time, breathlessly think of it while she 
watched me. 

All I had at first taken in was, as I say, her un- 
touched splendour; I don't know why that should 
have impressed me — as if it had been probable she 
would have appeared in her dressing-gown; it was 
the only thing to have expected. And it in fact 
plumed and enhanced her assurance, sustained her 
propriety, lent our belated interview the natural and 
casual note. But there was another service it still 
more rendered her : it so covered, at the first blush, 
the real message of her aspect, that she enjoyed the 
luxury — and I felt her enjoy it — of seeing my per- 
ception in arrest. Amazing, when I think of it, 

239 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the number of things that occurred in these stayed 
seconds of our silence; but they are perhaps best 
represented by the two most marked intensities of 
my own sensation: the first the certitude that she 
had at no moment since her marriage so triumph- 
antly asserted her defeat of time, and the second the 
conviction that I, losing with her while, as it were, 
we closed, a certain advantage I should never re- 
cover, had at no moment since the day before made 
so poor a figure on my own ground. Ah, it may 
have been only for six seconds that she caught me 
gaping at her renewed beauty; but six seconds, it 
was inevitable to feel, were quite enough for every 
purpose with which she had come down to me. 
She might have been a large, fair, rich, prosperous 
person of twenty-five; she was at any rate near 
enough to it to put me for ever in my place. It was 
a success, on her part, that, though I couldn't as yet 
fully measure it, there could be no doubt of what- 
ever, any more than of my somehow paying for it. 
Her being there at all, at such an hour, in such con- 
ditions, became, each moment, on the whole busi- 
ness, more and more a part of her advantage; the 
case for her was really in almost any aspect she 
could now make it wear to my imagination. My 
wealth of that faculty, never so stimulated, was thus, 
in a manner, her strength; by which I mean the im- 
possibility of my indifiference to the mere immense 
suggestiveness of our circumstances. How can I 

240 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

tell now to what tune the sense of all these played 
into my mind? — the huge oddity of the nameless 
idea on which we foregathered, the absence and 
hush of everything except that idea, so magnified 
in consequence and yet still, after all, altogether 
fantastic. There remained for her, there spoke for 
her too, her vividly " unconventional " step, the 
bravery of her rustling, on an understanding so 
difficult to give an account of, through places and 
times only made safe by the sleep of the unsuspect- 
ing. My imagination, in short, since I have spoken 
of it, couldn't do other than work for her from the 
moment she had, so simply yet so wonderfully, not 
failed me. Therefore it was all with me again, the 
vision of her reasons. They were in fact sufficiently 
in the sound of what she presently said. " Perhaps 
you don't know — but I mentioned in the proper 
quarter that I should sit up a little. They're of a 

kindness here, luckily ! So it's all right." It 

was all right, obviously — she made it so; but she 
made it so as well that, in spite of the splendour 
she showed me, she should be a little nervous. 
" We shall only take moreover," she added, " a 
minute." 

I should perhaps have wondered more what she 
proposed to do in a minute had I not felt it as 
already more or less done. Yes, she might have 
been twenty-five, and it was a short time for that 
to have taken. However, what I clutched at, what 

241 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I clung to, was that it was a nervous twenty-five. 
I might pay for her assurance, but wasn't there 
something of mine for which she might pay? I was 
nervous also, but, as I took in again, with a glance 
through our great chain of chambers, the wonderful 
conditions that protected us, I did my best to feel 
sure that it was only because I was so amused. 
That — in so high a form — was what it came to in 
the end. " I supposed," I replied, " that you'd 
have arranged; for, in spite of the way things were 
going, I hadn't given you up. I haven't under- 
stood, I confess," I went on, " why you've preferred 
a conference so intensely nocturnal — of which I 
quite feel, however, that, if it has happened to suit 
you, it isn't for me to complain. But I felt sure of 
you — that was the great thing — from the moment, 
half an hour ago, you so kindly spoke to me. I 
gave you, you see," I laughed, " what's called 
rope. 
" I don't suppose you mean," she exclaimed, " for 
me to hang myself! — for that, I assure you, is not 
at all what I'm prepared for." Then she seemed 
again to give me the magnificence of her youth. 
It wasn't, throughout, I was to feel, that she at all 
had abysses of irony, for she in fact happily needed 
none. Her triumph was in itself ironic enough, and 
all her point in her sense of her freshness. " Were 
you really so impatient? " But as I inevitably hung 
fire a Httle she continued before I could answer; 

242 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

which somewhat helped me indeed by showing the 
one flaw in her confidence. More extraordinary 
perhaps than anything else, moreover, was just my 
perception of this; which gives the value of all that 
each of us so visibly felt the other to have put to- 
gether, to have been making out and gathering in, 
since we parted, on the terrace, after seeing Mrs. 
Server and Briss come up from under their tree. 
We had, of a truth, arrived at our results — though 
mine were naturally the ones for me to believe in; 
and it was prodigious that we openely met not at 
all where we had last left each other, but exactly 
on what our subsequent suppressed processes had 
achieved. We hadn't named them — hadn't alluded 
to them, and we couldn't, no doubt, have done 
either; but they were none the less intensely there 
between us, with the whole bright, empty scene 
given up to them. Only she had her shrewd sense 
that mine, for reasons, might have been still more 
occult than her own. Hadn't I possibly burrowed 
the deeper — to come out in some uncalculated place 
behind her back? That was the flaw in her confi- 
dence. She had in spite of it her firm ground, and 
I could feel, to do her justice, how different a com- 
placency it was from such smug ignorance as Lady 
John's. If I didn't fear to seem to drivel about my 
own knowledge I should say that she had, in addi- 
tion to all the rest of her " pull," the benefit of strik- 
ing me as worthy of me. She was in the mystic 

243 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

circle — not one of us more; she knew the size of 
it; and it was our now being in it alone together, 
with everyone else out and with the size greater 
than it had yet been at all — it was this that gave 
the hour, in fine, so sharp a stamp. 

But she had meanwhile taken up my allusion to 
her having preferred so to wait. " I wanted to see 
you quietly; which was what I tried — not altogether 
successfully, it rather struck me at the moment — to 
make you understand when I let you know about 
it. You stared so that I didn't quite know what 
was the matter. Nothing could be quiet, I saw, till 
the going to bed was over, and I felt it coming off 
then from one minute to the other. I didn't wish 
publicly to be called away for it from this putting 
of our heads together, and, though you may think 
me absurd, I had a dislike to having our question 
of May up so long as she was hanging about. I 
knew of course that she would hang about till the 
very last moment, and that was what I perhaps a 
little clumsily — if it was my own fault ! — made the 
effort to convey to you. She may be hanging 
about still," Mrs. Briss continued, with her larger 
look round — her looks round were now immense; 
" but at any rate I shall have done what I could. 
I had a feeling — perfectly preposterous, I admit ! — 
against her seeing us together; but if she comes 
down again, as I've so boldly done, and finds us, 
she'll have no one but herself to thank. It's a funny 

244 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

house, for that matter," my friend rambled on, 
" and I'm not sure that anyone has gone to bed. 
One does what one Hkes; I'm an old woman, at 
any rate, and / do ! " She explained now, she ex- 
plained too much, she abounded, talking herself 
stoutly into any assurance that failed her. I had 
meanwhile with every word she uttered a sharper 
sense of the pressure, behind them all, of a new 
consciousness. It was full of everything she didn't 
say, and what she said was no representation what- 
ever of what was most in her mind. We had indeed 
taken a jump since noon — we had indeed come out 
further on. Just this fine dishonesty of her eyes, 
moreover — the light of a part to play, the excite- 
ment (heaven knows what it struck me as being!) 
of a happy duplicity — may well have been what con- 
tributed most to her present grand air. 

It was in any case what evoked for me most the 
contrasted image, so fresh with me, of the other, 
the tragic lady — the image that had so embodied 
the unutterable opposite of everything actually be- 
fore me. What was actually before me was the 
positive pride of life and expansion, the amplitude 
of conscious action and design; not the arid channel 
forsaken by the stream, but the full-fed river sweep- 
ing to the sea, the volume of water, the stately cur- 
rent, the flooded banks into which the source had 
swelled. There was nothing Mrs. Server had been 
able to risk, but there was a rich indifference to risk 

245 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

in the mere carriage of Grace Brissenden's head. 
Her reference, for that matter, to our discussed sub- 
ject had the effect of relegating to the realm of dim 
shades the lady representing it, and there was small 
soundness in her glance at the possibility on the 
part of this person of an anxious prowl back. There 
was indeed — there could be — small sincerity in any 
immediate demonstration from a woman so marked- 
ly gaining time and getting her advantages in hand. 
The connections between the two, certainly, were 
indirect and intricate, but it was positive to me that, 
for the spiritual ear, my companion's words had the 
sound of a hard bump, a contact from the force of 
which the weaker vessel might have been felt to 
crack. At last, merciful powers, it was in pieces! 
The shock of the brass had told upon the porcelain, 
and I fancied myself for an instant facing Mrs. Briss 
over the damage — a damage from which I was 
never, as I knew, to see the poor banished ghost 
recover. As strange as anything was this efifect 
almost of surprise for me in the freedom of her 
mention of " May." For what had she come to me, 
if for anything, but to insist on her view of May, 
and what accordingly was more to the point than 
to mention her? Yet it was almost already as if to 
mention her had been to get rid of her. She was 
mentioned, however, inevitably and none the less 
promptly, anew — even as if simply to receive a final 
shake before being quite dropped. My friend kept 

246 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

it up. " If you were so bent on not losing what I 
might have to give you that you fortunately stuck 
to the ship, for poor Briss to pick you up, wasn't 
this also " — she roundly put it to me — " a good deal 
because you've been nursing all day the grievance 
with which I this morning so comfortably furnished 
you?" 

I just waited, but fairly for admiration. " Oh, I 
certainly had my reasons — as I've no less certainly 
had my luck — for not indeed deserting our dear 
little battered, but still just sufficiently buoyant ves- 
sel, from which everyone else appears, I recognise, 
to s'etre saiive. She'll float a few minutes more ! 
But (before she sinks !) do you mean by my griev- 
ance " 

" Oh, you know what I mean by your griev- 
ance ! " She had no intention, Mrs. Briss, of sink- 
ing. " I was to give you time to make up your 
mind that Mrs. Server was our lady. You so re- 
sented, for some reason, my suggesting it that I 
scarcely believed you'd consider it at all; only I 
hadn't forgotten, when I spoke to you a while since, 
that you had nevertheless handsomely promised me 
that you would do your best." 

" Yes, and, still more handsomely, that if I 
changed my mind, I would eat, in your presence, 
for my error, the largest possible slice of humble pie. 
If you didn't see this morning," I continued, " quite 
why I should have cared so much, so I don't quite 

247 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

see why, in your different way, yoii should; at the 
same time that I do full justice to the good faith 
with which you've given me my chance. Please 
believe that if I could candidly embrace that chance 
I should feel all the joy in the world in repaying 
you. It's only, alas ! because I cling to my candour 
that I venture to disappoint you. If I cared this 
morning it was really simple enough. You didn't 
convince me, but I should have cared just as much 
if you had. I only didn't see what you saw. I 
needed more than you could then give me. I knew, 
you see, what I needed — I mean before I struck! 
It was the element of collateral support that we 
both lacked. I couldn't do without it as you could. 
This was what I, clumsily enough, tried to show 
you I felt. You, on your side," I pursued, " grasped 
admirably the evident truth that that element could 
be present only in such doses as practically to escape 
detection." I kept it up as she had done, and I 
remember striking myself as scarce less excitedly 
voluble. I was conscious of being at a point at 
which I should have to go straight, to go fast, to 
go it, as the phrase is, blind, in order to go at all. 
I was also conscious — and it came from the look 
with which she listened to me and that told me more 
than she wished — I felt sharply, though but instinc- 
tively, in fine, that I should still, whatever I practi- 
cally had lost, make my personal experience most 
rich and most complete by putting it definitely to 

248 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

her that, sorry as I might be not to oblige her, I 
had, even at this hour, no submission to make. I 
doubted in fact whether my making one would have 
obliged her; but I felt that, for all so much had come 
and gone, I vi^as not there to take, for her possible 
profit, any new tone with her. She would suffi- 
ciently profit, at the worst, by the old. My old 
motive — old with the prodigious antiquity the few 
hours had given it — had quite left me; I seemed to 
myself to know little now of my desire to " protect " 
Mrs. Server. She was certainly, with Mrs. Briss 
at least, past all protection; and the conviction had 
grown with me, in these few minutes, that there was 
now no rag of the queer truth that Mrs. Briss hadn't 
secretly — by which I meant morally — handled. 
But I none the less, on a perfectly simple reasoning, 
stood to my guns, and with no sense whatever, I 
must add, of now breaking my vow of the morning. 
I had made another vow since then — made it to the 
poor lady herself as we sat together in the wood; 
passed my word to her that there was no approxi- 
mation I pretended even to myself to have made. 
How then was I to pretend to Mrs. Briss, and what 
facts had I collected on which I could respectably 
ground an acknowledgment to her that I had come 
round to her belief? If I had " caught " our in- 
criminated pair together — really together — even 
for three minutes, I would, I sincerely considered, 
have come round. But I was to have performed 

249 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

this revolution on nothing less, as I now went on to 
explain to her. " Of course if you've got new evi- 
dence I shall be delighted to hear it; and of course 
I can't help wondering whether the possession of it 
and the desire to overwhelm me with it aren't, to- 
gether, the one thing you've been nursing till now." 

Oh, how intensely she didn't like such a tone! 
If she hadn't looked so handsome I would say she 
made a wry face over it, though I didn't even yet 
see where her dislike would make her come out. 
Before she came out, in fact, she waited as if it were 
a question of dashing her head at a wall. Then, at 
last, she charged. " It's nonsense. I've nothing 
to tell you. I feel there's nothing in it and I've 
given it up." 

I almost gaped — by which I mean that I looked 
as if I did — for surprise. " You agree that it's not 

she ? " Then, as she again waited, " It's you 

who've come round? " I insisted. 

"To your doubt of its being May? Yes — I've 
come round." 

" Ah, pardon me," I returned; " what I expressed 
this morning was, if I remember rightly, not at all 
a ' doubt,' but a positive, intimate conviction that 
was inconsistent with any doubt. I was emphatic 
— purely and simply — that I didn't see it." 

She looked, however, as if she caught me in a 
weakness here. " Then why did you say to me that 

if you should reconsider " 

250 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" You should handsomely have it from me, and 
my grounds? Why, as I've just reminded you, as 
a form of courtesy to you — magnanimously to help 
you, as it were, to feel as comfortable as I conceived 
you naturally would desire to feel in your own con- 
viction. Only for that. And now," I smiled, " I'm 
to understand from you that, in spite of that im- 
mense allowance, you haven't, all this while, felt 
comfortable? " 

She gave, on this, in a wonderful, beautiful way, 
a slow, simplifying headshake. " Mrs. Server isn't 
in it!" 

The only way then to take it from her was that 
her concession was a prelude to something still bet- 
ter; and when I had given her time to see this dawn 
upon me I had my eagerness and I jumped into the 
breathless. " You've made out then who isf " 

" Oh, I don't make out, you know," she laughed, 
" so much as you ! SJie isn't," she simply repeated. 

I looked at it, on my inspiration, quite ruefully — 
almost as if I now wished, after all, she were. " Ah, 
but, do you know? it really strikes me you make 
out marvels. You made out this morning quite 
what I couldn't. I hadn't put together anything 
so extraordinary as that — in the total absence of 
everything — it should have been our friend." 

Mrs. Briss appeared, on her side, to take in the 
intention of this. " What do you mean by the 
total absence? When I made my mistake," she de- 

251 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

clared as if in the interest of her dignity, " I didn't 
think everything- absent." 

" I see," I admitted. " I see," I thoughtfully 
repeated. " And do you, then, think everything 
now? " 

" I had my honest impression of the moment," 
she pursued as if she had not heard me. " There 
were appearances that, as it at the time struck me, 
fitted." 

" Precisely " — and I recalled for her the one she 
had made most of. " There was in especial the ap- 
pearance that she was at a particular moment using 
Brissenden to show whom she was not using. You 
felt then," I ventured to observe, " the force of 
that." 

I ventured less than, already, I should have liked 
to venture; yet I none the less seemed to see her 
try on me the effect of the intimation that I was 
going far. " Is it your wish," she inquired with 
much nobleness, " to confront me, to my confusion, 
with my inconsistency? " Her nobleness offered 
itself somehow as such a rebuke to my mere logic 
that, in my momentary irritation, I might have been 
on the point of assenting to her question. This 
imminence of my assent, justified by my horror of 
her huge egotism, but justified by nothing else and 
precipitating everything, seemed as marked for 
these few seconds as if we each had our eyes on it. 
But I sat so tight that the danger passed, leaving 

252 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

my silence to do what it could for my manners. 
She proceeded meanwhile to add a very handsome 
account of her own. " You should do me the jus- 
tice to recognise how little I need have spoken an- 
other word to you, and how little, also, this amiable 
explanation to you is in the interest of one's natural 
pride. It seems to me I've come to you here alto- 
gether in the interest of yours. You talk about 
humble pie, but I think that, upon my word — with 
all I've said to you — it's I who have had to eat it. 
The magnanimity you speak of," she continued 
with all her grandeur — " I really don't see, either, 
whose it is but mine. I don't see what account of 
anything I'm in any way obliged to give." 

I granted it quickly and without reserve. 
" You're not obliged to give any — you're quite 
right : you do it only because you're such a large, 
splendid creature. I quite feel that, beside you " — 
I did, at least, treat myself to the amusement of 
saying — " I move in a tiny circle. Still, I won't 
have it " — I could also, again, keep it up — " that 
our occasion has nothing for you but the taste of 
abasement. You gulp your mouthful down, but 
hasn't it been served on gold plate? You've had a 
magnificent day — a brimming cup of triumph, and 
you're more beautiful and fresh, after it all, and at 
an hour when fatigue would be almost positively 
graceful, than you were even this morning, when 
you met me as a daughter of the dawn. That's the 

253 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

sort of sense," I laughed, " that must sustain a 
woman! " And I wound up on a complete recov- 
ery of my good-humour. " No, no. I thank you 
— thank you immensely. But I don't pity you. 
You can afiford to lose." I wanted her perplexity — 
the proper sharp dose of it — to result both from her 
knowing and her not knowing sufficiently what I 
meant; and when I in fact saw how perplexed she 
could be and how little, again, she could enjoy it, 
I felt anew my private wonder at her having cared 
and dared to meet me. Where ivas enjoyment, for 
her, where the insolence of success, if the breath of 
irony could chill them? Why, since she was bold, 
should she be susceptible, and how, since she was 
susceptible, could she be bold? I scarce know 
what, at this moment, determined the divination; 
but everything, the distinct and the dim alike, had 
cleared up the next instant at the touch of the real 
truth. The certitude of the source of my present 
opportunity had rolled over me before we ex- 
changed another word. The source was simply 
Gilbert Long, and she was there because he had 
directed it. This connection hooked itself, like a 
sudden picture and with a click that fairly resound- 
ed through our empty rooms, into the array of the 
other connections, to the immense enrichment, as it 
was easy to feel, of the occasion, and to the immense 
confirmation of the very idea that, in the course of 
the evening, I had come near dismissing from my 

254 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

mind as too fantastic even for the rest of the com- 
pany it should enjoy there. What I now was sure 
of flashed back, at any rate, every syllable of sense 
I could have desired into the suggestion I had, after 
the music, caught from the juxtaposition of these 
two. Thus solidified, this conviction, it spread and 
spread to a distance greater than I could just then 
traverse under Mrs. Briss's eyes, but which, exactly 
for that reason perhaps, quickened my pride in the 
kingdom of thought I had won. I was really not 
to have felt more, in the whole business, than I felt 
at this moment that by my own right hand I had 
gained the kingdom. Long and she were together, 
and I was alone thus in face of them, but there was 
none the less not a single flower of the garden that 
my woven wreath should lack. 

I must have looked queer to my friend as I 
grinned to myself over this vow; but my relish of 
the way I was keeping things together made me 
perhaps for the instant unduly rash. I cautioned 
myself, however, fortunately, before it could leave 
her — scared a little, all the same, even with Long 
behind her — an advantage to take, and, in infinitely 
less time than I have needed to tell it, I had achieved 
my flight into luminous ether and, alighting grace- 
fully on my feet, reported myself at my post. I had 
in other words taken in both the full prodigy of the 
entente between Mrs. Server's lover and poor Briss's 
wife, and the liner strength it gave the last-named 

255 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

as the representative of their interest. I may add 
too that I had even taken time fairly not to decide 
which of these two branches of my vision — that of 
the terms of their intercourse, or that of their need 
of it — was likely to prove, in delectable retrospect, 
the more exquisite. All this, I admit, was a good 
deal to have come and gone while my privilege 
trembled, in its very essence, in the scale. Mrs. 
Briss had but a back to turn, and everything was 
over. She had, in strictness, already uttered what 
saved her honour, and her revenge on impertinence 
might easily be her withdrawing with one of her 
sweeps. I couldn't certainly in that case hurry 
after her without spilling my cards. As my accu- 
mulations of lucidity, however, were now such as to 
defy all leakage, I promptly recognised the facilities 
involved in a superficial sacrifice; and with one more 
glance at the beautiful fact that she knew the 
strength of Long's hand, I again went steadily and 
straight. She was acting not only for herself, and 
since she had another also to serve and, as I was 
sure, report to, I should sufficiently hold her. I 
knew moreover that I held her as soon as I had be- 
gun afresh. " I don't mean that anything alters the 
fact that you lose gracefully. It is awfully charm- 
ing, your thus giving yourself up, and yet, justified 
as I am by it, I can't help regretting a little the 
excitement I found it this morning to pull a differ- 
ent way from you. Shall I tell you," it suddenly 

256 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

came to me to put to her, " what, for some reason, 
a man feels aware of? " And then as, guarded, still 
uneasy, she would commit herself to no permission : 
" That pulling against you also had its thrill. You 
defended your cause. Oh," I quickly added, " I 
know — who should know better? — that it was bad. 
Only — what shall I say? — you weren't bad, and one 
had to fight. And then there was what one was 
fighting for ! Well, you're not bad now, either; so 
that you may ask me, of course, what more I want." 
I tried to think a moment. " It isn't that, thrown 
back on the comparative dullness of security, I find 
— as people have been known to — my own cause 
less good : no, it isn't that." After which I had my 
illumination. " I'll tell you what it is : it's the come- 
down of ceasing to work with you ! " 

She looked as if she were quite excusable for not 
following me. " To ' work '? " 

I immediately explained. " Even fighting was 
working, for we struck, you'll remember, sparks, 
and sparks were what we wanted. There we are 
then," I cheerfully went on. " Sparks are what we 
still want, and you've not come to me, I trust, with 
a mere spent match. I depend upon it that you've 
another to strike." I showed her without fear all 
I took for granted. " Who, then, has? " 

She was superb in her coldness, but her stare was 
partly blank. " Who then has what? " 

'' Why, done it." And as even at this she didn't 
257 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

light I gave her something of a jog. " You haven't, 
with the force of your revulsion, I hope, hterally lost 
our thread." But as, in spite of my thus waiting for 
her to pick it up she did nothing, I offered myself 
as fairly stooping to the carpet for it and putting it 
back in her hand. " Done what we spent the morn- 
ing wondering at. Who then, if it isn't, certainly, 
Mrs. Server, is the woman who has made Gilbert 
Long — well, what you know? " 

I had needed the moment to take in the special 
shade of innocence she was by this time prepared to 
show me. It was an innocence, in particular, in 
respect to the relation of anyone, in all the vast im- 
propriety of things, to anyone. '* I'm afraid I know 
nothing." 

I really wondered an instant how she could ex- 
pect help from such extravagance. " But I thought 
you just recognised that you do enjoy the sense of 
your pardonable mistake. You knew something 
when you knew enough to see you had made it." 

She faced me as with the frank perception that, 
of whatever else one might be aware, I abounded in 
traps, and that this would probably be one of my 
worst. " Oh, I think one generally knows when 
one has made a mistake." 

" That's all then I invite you — a mistake, as you 
properly call it — to allow me to impute to you. I'm 
not accusing you of having made fifty. You made 
none whatever, I hold, when you agreed with me 

258 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

with such eagerness about the striking change in 
him." 

She affected me as asking herself a little, on this, 
whether vagueness, the failure of memory, the re- 
jection of nonsense, mightn't still serve her. But 
she saw the next moment a better way. It all came 
back to her, but from so very far off. " The change, 
do you mean, in poor Mr. Long? " 

" Of what other change — except, as you may say, 
your own — have you met me here to speak of? 
Your own, I needn't remind you, is part and parcel 
of Long's." 

" Oh, my own," she presently returned, " is a 
much simpler matter even than that. My own is 
the recognition that I just expressed to you and 
that I can't consent, if you please, to your twisting 
into the recognition of anything else. It's the 
recognition that I know nothing of any other 
change. I stick, if you'll allow me, to my igno- 
rance." 

" I'll allow you with joy," I laughed, " if you'll let 
me stick to it with you. Your own change is quite 
sufficient — it gives us all we need. It will give us, 
if we retrace the steps of it, everything, every- 
thing!" 

Mrs. Briss considered. " I don't quite see, do I? 
why, at this hour of the night, we should begin to 
retrace steps." 

" Simply because it's the hour of the night you've 

259 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

happened, in your generosity and your discretion, 
to choose. I'm struck, I confess," I declared with 
a still sharper conviction, " with the wonderful 
charm of it for our purpose." 

" And, pray, what do you call with such solem- 
nity," she inquired, "our purpose?" 

I had fairly recovered at last — so far from being 
solemn — an appropriate gaiety. " I can only, with 
positiveness, answer for mine ! That has remained 
all day the same — to get at the truth : not, that is, to 
relax my grasp of that tip of the tail of it which you 
so helped me this morning to fasten to. If you've 
ceased to care to help me," I pursued, " that's a 
difiference indeed. But why," I candidly, pleading- 
ly asked, " should you cease to care? " It was more 
and more of a comfort to feel her imprisoned in her 
inabihty really to explain her being there. To 
show herself as she was explained it only so far as 
she could express that; which was just the freedom 
she could least take. " What on earth is between 
us, anyhow," I insisted, " but our confounded in- 
terest? That's only quickened, for me, don't you 
see? by the channing way you've come round; and I 
don't see how it can logically be anything less than 
quickened for yourself. We're like the messengers 
and heralds in the tale of Cinderella, and I protest, 
I assure you, against any sacrifice of our denoii- 
ment. We've still the glass shoe to fit." 

I took pleasure at the moment in my metaphor; 
260 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

but this was not the case, I soon enough perceived, 
with my companion. " How can I tell, please," she 
demanded, " what you consider you're talking 
about?" 

I smiled; it was so quite the question Ford Obert, 
in the smoking-room, had begun by putting me. 
I hadn't to take time to remind myself how I had 
dealt with him. " And you knew," I sighed, " so 
beautifully, you glowed over it so, this morning ! " 
She continued to give me, in every way, her discon- 
nection from this morning, so that I had only to 
proceed : " You've not availed yourself of this oc- 
casion to pretend to me that poor Mr. Long, as you 
call him, is, after all, the same limited person " 

" That he always was, and that you, yesterday, 
so suddenly discovered him to have ceased to be? " 
— for with this she had waked up. But she was 
still thinking how she could turn it. " You see too 
much." 

■' Oh, I know I do — ever so much too much. 
And much as I see, I express only half of it — so you 
may judge ! " I laughed. " But what will you have? 
I see what I see, and this morning, for a good bit, 
you did me the honour to do the same. I returned, 
also, the compliment, didn't I? by seeing something 
of what you saw. We put it, the whole thing, to- 
gether, and we shook the bottle hard. I'm to take 
from you, after this," I wound up, " that what it 
contains is a perfectly colourless fluid?" 

261 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I paused for a reply, but it was not to come so 
happily as from Obert. *' You talk too much ! " 
said Mrs. Briss. 

I met it with amazement. " Why, whom have 
I told? " 

I looked at her so hard with it that her colour 
began to rise, which made me promptly feel that 
she wouldn't press that point. " I mean you're car- 
ried away — you're abused by a fine fancy: so that, 
with your art of putting things, one doesn't know 
where one is — nor, if you'll allow me to say so, do 
I quite think you always do. Of course I don't 
deny you're awfully clever. But you build up," she 
brought out with a regret so indulgent and a reluc- 
tance so marked that she for some seconds fairly 
held the blow — " you build up houses of cards." 

I had been impatient to learn what, and, frankly, 
I was disappointed. This broke from me, after an 
instant, doubtless, with a bitterness not to be mis- 
taken. " Long isn't what he seems? " 

" Seems to whom? " she asked sturdily. 

" Well, call it — for simplicity — to me. For you 
see " — and I spoke as to show what it was to see — 
" it all stands or falls by that." 

The explanation presently appeared a little to 
have softened her. If it all stood or fell only by 
that, it stood or fell by something that, for her com- 
fort, might be not so unsuccessfully disposed of. 
She exhaled, with the swell of her fine person, a 

262 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

comparative blandness — seemed to play with the 
idea of a smile. She had, in short, her own explana- 
tion. " The trouble with you is that you over-esti- 
mate the penetration of others. How can it ap- 
proach your own? " 

" Well, yours had for a while, I should say, dis- 
tinct moments of keeping up with it. Nothing is 
more possible," I went on, " than that I do talk too 
much; but I've done so — about the question in dis- 
pute between us — only to you. I haven't, as I con- 
ceived we were absolutely not to do, mentioned it 
to anyone else, nor given anyone a glimpse of our 
difference. If you've not understood yourself as 
pledged to the same reserve, and have consequent- 
ly," I went on, " appealed to the Hght of other wis- 
dom, it shows at least that, in spite of my intellectual 
pace, you must more or less have followed me. 
What am I not, in fine, to think of your intelligence," 
I asked, " if, deciding for a resort to headquarters, 
you've put the question to Long himself? " 

"The question?" She was straight out to sea 
again. 

" Of the identity of the lady." 

She slowly, at this, headed about. " To Long 
himself? " 



263 



XIII 

I HAD felt I could risk such directness only by 
making it extravagant — by suggesting it as 
barely imaginable that she could so have played our 
game; and during the instant for which I had now 
pulled her up I could judge I had been right. It 
was an instant that settled everything, for I saw 
her, with intensity, with gallantry too, surprised but 
not really embarrassed, recognise that of course she 
must simply lie. I had been justified by making it 
so possible for her to lie. " It would have been a 
short cut," I said, " and even more strikingly per- 
haps — to do it justice — a bold deed. But it would 
have been, in strictness, a departure — wouldn't it? 
— from our so distinguished little compact. Yet 
while I look at you," I went on, " I wonder. Bold 
deeds are, after all, quite in your line; and I'm not 
sure I don't rather want not to have missed so much 
possible comedy. ' I have it for you from Mr. Long 
himself that, every appearance to the contrary not- 
withstanding, his stupidity is unimpaired ' — isn't 
that, for the beauty of it, after all, what you've 
veraciously to give me? " We stood face to face a 
moment, and I laughed out. " The beauty of it 
would be great ! " 

264 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I had given her time; I had seen her safely to 
shore. It was quite what I had meant to do, but 
she now took still better advantage than I had ex- 
pected of her opportunity. She not only scrambled 
up the bank, she recovered breath and turned round. 
" Do you imagine he would have told me? " 

It was magnificent, but I felt she was still to bet- 
ter it should I give her a new chance. " Who the 
lady really is? Well, hardly; and that's why, as you 
so acutely see, the question of your having risked 
such a step has occurred to me only as a jest. Fancy 
indeed " — I piled it up — " your saying to him : 
' We're all noticing that you're so much less of an 
idiot than you used to be, and we've different views 
of the miracle ' ! " 

I had been going on, but I was checked without a 
word from her. Her look alone did it, for, though 
it was a look that partly spoiled her lie, it — by that 
very fact — suf^ced to my confidence. " I've not 
spoken to a creature." 

It was beautifully said, but I felt again the abysses 
that the mere saying of it covered, and the sense of 
these wonderful things was not a little, no doubt, in 
my immediate cheer. " Ah, then, we're all right ! " 
I could have rubbed my hands over it. " I mean, 
however," I quickly added, " only as far as that. 
I don't at all feel comfortable about your new 
theory itself, which puts me so wretchedly in the 
wrong." 

265 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"Rather!" said Mrs. Briss almost gaily. 
" Wretchedly indeed in the wrong ! " 

" Yet only — equally of course," I returned after 
a brief brooding, " if I come within a conceivability 
of accepting it. Are you conscious that, in default 
of Long's own word — equivocal as that word would 
be — you press it upon me without the least other 
guarantee? " 

" And pray," she asked, " what guarantee had 
yoiif " 

" For the theory with which we started? Why, 
our recognised fact. The change in the man. You 
may say," I pursued, " that I was the first to speak 
for him; but being the first didn't, in your view, con- 
stitute a weakness when it came to your speaking 
yt)urself for Mrs. Server. By which I mean," I 
added, " speaking against her." 

She remembered, but not for my benefit. " Well, 
you then asked me ^ny warrant. And as regards 
Mr. Long and your speaking against Jiim " 

" Do you describe v^^hat I say as ' against ' him? " 
I immediately broke in. 

It took her but an instant. " Surely — to have 
made him out horrid." 

I could only want to fix it. " ' Horrid ' ? " 

" Why, having such secrets." She was roundly 
ready now. " Sacrificing poor May." 

" But yoti, dear lady, sacrificed poor May ! It 
didn't strike you as horrid then." 

266 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Well, that was only," she maintained, " because 
you talked me over." 

I let her see the full process of my taking — or not 
taking — this in, " And who is it then that — if, as 
you say, you've spoken to no one — has, as I may 
call it, talked you under? " 

She completed, on the spot, her statement of a 
moment before. " Not a creature has spoken to 
me." 

I felt somehow the wish to make her say it in as 
many ways as possible — I seemed so to enjoy her 
saying it. This helped me to make my tone ap- 
prove and encourage. " You've communicated so 
little with anyone ! " I didn't even make it a ques- 
tion. 

It was scarce yet, however, quite good enough. 
" So little? I've not communicated the least mite." 

" Precisely. But don't think me impertinent for 
having for a moment wondered. What I should 
say to you if you had, you know, would be that you 
just accused me." 

" Accused you? " 

" Of talking too much." 

It came back to her dim. " Are we accusing 
each other? " 

Her tone seemed suddenly to put us nearer to- 
gether than we had ever been at all. " Dear no," 
I laughed — " not each other; only with each other's 
help, a few of our good friends." 

267 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

"A few?" She handsomely demurred. "But 
one or two at the best." 

"Or at the worst!" — I continued to laugh. 
" And not even those, it after all appears, very 
much ! " 

She didn't like my laughter, but she was now 
grandly indulgent. " Well, I accuse no one." 

I was silent a little; then I concurred. "It's 
doubtless your best line; and I really quite feel, at 
all events, that when you mentioned a while since 
that I talk too much you only meant too much to 
you.'' 

" Yes — I wasn't imputing to you the same direct 
appeal. I didn't suppose," she explained, " that — 
to match your own supposition of me — you had re- 
sorted to May herself." 

" You didn't suppose I had asked her? " The 
point was positively that she didn't; yet it made us 
look at each other almost as hard as if she did. 
" No, of course you couldn't have supposed any- 
thing so cruel — all the more that, as you knew, I 
had not admitted the possibility." 

She accepted my assent; but, oddly enough, with 
a sudden qualification that showed her as still sharp- 
ly disposed to make use of any loose scrap of her 
embarrassed acuteness. " Of course, at the same 
time, you yourself saw that your not admitting the 
possibility would have taken the edge from your 
cruelty. It's not the innocent." she suggestively 
remarked, " that we fear to frighten." 

26S 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Oh," I returned, " I fear, mostly, I think, to 
frighten any one. I'm not particularly brave. I 
haven't, at all events, in spite of my certitude, in- 
terrogated Mrs. Server, and I give you my word 
of honour that I've not had any denial from her to 
prop up my doubt. It still stands on its own feet, 
and it was its own battle that, when I came here 
at your summons, it was prepared to fight. Let 
me accordingly remind you," I pursued, " in con- 
nection with that, of the one sense in which you 
were, as you a moment ago said, talked over by me. 
I persuaded you apparently that Long's metamor- 
phosis was not the work of Lady John. I persuad- 
ed you of nothing else." 

She looked down a little, as if again at a trap. 
" You persuaded me that it was the work of some- 
body." Then she held up her head. " It came to 
the same thing." 

If I had credit then for my trap it at least might 
serve. " The same thing as what? " 

" Why, as claiming that it zvas she." 

" Poor May — ' claiming ' ? When I insisted it 
wasn't!" 

Mrs. Brissenden flushed. " You didn't insist it 
wasn't anybody ! " 

" Why should I when I didn't believe so? I've 
left you in no doubt," I indulgently smiled, *' of my 
beliefs. It was somebody — and it still is." 

She looked about at the top of the room. " The 
mistake's now yours." 

269 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I watched her an instant. " Can you tell me then 
what one does to recover from such mistakes? " 

" One thinks a little." 

" Ah, the more I've thought the deeper I've 
sunk ! And that seemed to me the case with you 
this morning," I added, " the more you thought." 

" Well, then," she frankly declared, " I must have 
stopped thinking ! " 

It was a phenomenon, I sufficiently showed, that 
thought only could meet. " Could you tell me then 
at what point? " 

She had to think even to do that. " At what 
point? " 

" What in particular determined, I mean, your 
arrest? You surely didn't — launched as you were 
— stop short all of yourself." 

She fronted me, after all, still so bravely that I 
believed her for an instant not to be, on this article, 
without an answer she could produce. The un- 
expected therefore broke for me when she fairly 
produced none. " I confess I don't make out," she 
simply said, " while you seem so little pleased that 
I agree with you." 

I threw back, in despair, both head and hands. 
" But, you poor, dear thing, you don't in the least 
agree with me ! You flatly contradict me. You 
deny my miracle." 

" I don't believe in miracles," she panted. 

*' So I exactly, at this late hour, learn. But I 
270 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

don't insist on the name. Nothing is, I admit, a 
miracle from the moment one's on the track of the 
cause, which was the scent we were following. Call 
the thing simply my fact." 

She gave her high head a toss. " If it's yours it's 
nobody else's ! " 

" Ah, there's just the question — if we could know 
all ! But my point is precisely, for the present, 
that you do deny it." 

" Of course I deny it," said Mrs. Briss. 

I took a moment, but my silence held her. 
" Your * of course ' would be what I would again 
contest, what I would denounce and brand as the 
word too much — the word that spoils, were it not 
that it seems best, that it in any case seems neces- 
sary, to let all question of your consistency go." 

On that I had paused, and, as I felt myself still 
holding her, I was not surprised when my pause had 
an effect. " You do let it go? " 

She had tried, I could see, to put the inquiry as all 
ironic. But it was not all ironic; it was, in fact, lit- 
tle enough so to suggest for me some intensification 
— not quite, I trust, wanton — of her suspense. I 
should be at a loss to say indeed how much it sug- 
gested or half of what it told. These things again 
almost violently moved me, and if I, after an instant, 
in my silence, turned away, it was not only to keep 
her waiting, but to make my elation more private. I 
turned away to that tune that I literally, for a few 

271 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

minutes, quitted her, availing myself thus, superfi- 
cially, of the air of weighing a consequence. I wan- 
dered off twenty steps and, while I passed my hand 
over my troubled head, looked vaguely at objects on 
tables and sniffed absently at flowers in bowls. I 
don't know how long I so lost myself, nor quite why 
— as I must for some time have kept it up — my com- 
panion didn't now really embrace her possible alter- 
native of rupture and retreat. Or rather, as to her 
action in this last matter, I am, and was on the spot, 
clear: I knew at that moment how much she knew 
she must not leave me without having got from me. 
It came back in waves, in wider glimpses, and pro- 
duced in so doing the excitement I had to control. 
It could not but be exciting to talk, as we talked, 
on the basis of those suppressed processes and un- 
avowed references which made the meaning of our 
meeting so different from its form. We knew our- 
selves — what moved me, that is, was that she knew 
me — to mean, at every point, immensely more than 
I said or than she answered; just as she saw me, at 
the same points, measure the space by which her 
answers fell short. This made my conversation 
with her a totally other and a far more interesting 
thing than any colloquy I had ever enjoyed; it had 
even a sharpness that had not belonged, a few hours 
before, to my extraordinary interview with Mrs. 
Server. She couldn't afford to quarrel with me for 
catechising her; she couldn't afford not to have 

272 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

kepi, in her way, faith with me; she couldn't afford, 
after inconceivable passages with Long, not to treat 
me as an observer to be squared. She had come 
down to square me; she was hanging on to square 
me; she was suffering and stammering and lying; 
she was both carrying it grandly off and letting it 
desperately go : all, all to square me. And I caught 
moreover perfectly her vision of her way, and I fol- 
lowed her way even while I judged it, feeling that 
the only personal privilege I could, after all, save 
from the whole business was that of understanding. 
I couldn't save Mrs. Server, and I couldn't save poor 
Briss; I could, however, guard, to the last grain of 
gold, my precious sense of their loss, their disinte- 
gration and their doom; and it was for this I was 
now bargaining. 

It was of giving herself away just enough not to 
spoil for me my bargain over my treasure that Mrs. 
Briss's bribe would consist. She would let me see 
as far as I would if she could feel sure I would do 
nothing; and it was exactly in this question of how 
much I might have scared my couple into the sense 
I coidd " do " that the savour of my suspense most 
dwelt. I could have made them uneasy, of course, 
only by making them fear my intervention; and yet 
the idea of their being uneasy was less wonderful 
than the idea of my having, with all my precautions, 
communicated to them a consciousness. This was 
so the last thing I had wanted to do that I felt, dur- 

273 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ing my swift excursion, how much time I should 
need in the future for recovery of the process — all 
of the finest wind-blown intimations, woven of 
silence and secrecy and air — by which their sus- 
picion would have throbbed into life. I could only, 
provisionally and sketchily, figure it out, this sus- 
picion, as having, little by little — not with a sudden 
start — felt itself in the presence of my own, just as 
my own now returned the compliment. What 
came back to me, as I have said, in waves and wider 
glimpses, was the marvel of their exchange of sig- 
nals, the phenomenon, scarce to be represented, of 
their breaking ground with each other. They both 
had their treasure to guard, and they had looked to 
each other with the instinct of help. They had felt, 
on either side, the victim possibly slip, and they had 
connected the possibility with an interest discerni- 
bly inspired in me by this personage, and with a 
relation discoverably established by that interest. 
It wouldn't have been a danger, perhaps, if the two 
victims hadn't slipped together; and more amazing, 
doubtless, than anything else was the recognition 
by my sacrificing couple of the opportunity drawn 
by my sacrificed from being conjoined in my char- 
ity. How could they know, Gilbert Long and Mrs. 
Briss, that actively to communicate a consciousness 
to my other friends had no part in my plan? The 
most I had dreamed of, I could honourably feel, was 
to assure myself of their independent possession of 

274 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

one. These things were with me while, as I have 
noted, I made Grace Brissenden wait, and it was 
also with me that, though I condoned her deviation, 
she must take it from me as a charity. I had pres- 
ently achieved another of my full revolutions, and 
I faced her again with a view of her overture and 
my answer to her last question. The terms were 
not altogether what my pity could have wished, but 
I sufficiently kept everything together to have to 
see that there were limits to my choice. " Yes, I let 
it go, your change of front, though it vexes me a 
little — and I'll in a moment tell you why — to have 
to. But let us put it that it's on a condition." 

" Change of front? " she murmured while she 
looked at me. " Your expressions are not of the 
happiest." 

But I saw it was only again to cover a doubt. 
My condition, for her, was questionable, and I felt 
it would be still more so on her hearing what it was. 
Meanwhile, however, in spite of her qualification of 
it, I had fallen back, once and for all, on pure be- 
nignity. " It scarce matters if I'm clumsy when 
you're practically so bland. I wonder if you'll 
understand," I continued, " if I make you an ex- 
planation." 

" Most probably," she answered, as handsome as 
ever, " not." 

" Let me at all events try you. It's moreover the 
one I just promised; which was no more indeed 

275 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

than the development of a feeling I've already per- 
mitted myself to show you. I lose " — I brought it 
out — " by your agreeing with me ! " 

"'Lose'?" 

"Yes; because w'hile we disagreed you were, in 
spite of that, on the right side." 

" And what do you call the right side? " 

" Well " — I brought it out again — " on the same 
side as my imagination." 

But it gave her at least a chance. " Oh, your 
imagination ! " 

" Yes — I know what you think of it; you've suffi- 
ciently hinted how little that is. But it's precisely 
because you regard it as rubbish that I now appeal 
to you." 

She continued to guard herself by her surprises. 
"Appeal? I thought you were on the ground, 
rather," she beautifully smiled, " of dictation." 

" Well, I'm that too. I dictate my terms. But 
my terms are in themselves the appeal." I was in- 
genious but patient. " See? " 

" How in the world can I see? " 

" Voyons, then. Light or darkness, my imagina- 
tion rides me. But of course if it's all wrong I want 
to get rid of it. You can't, naturally, help me to 
destroy the faculty itself, but you can aid in the de- 
feat of its application to a particular case. It was 
because you so smiled, before, on that application, 
that I valued even my minor difference with you; 

276 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and what I refer to as my loss is the fact that your 
frown leaves me struggling alone. The best thing 
for me, accordingly, as I feel, is to get rid altogether 
of the obsession. The way to do that, clearly, since 
you've done it, is just to quench the fire. By the 
fire I mean the flame of the fancy that blazed so for 
us this morning. What the deuce have you, for 
yourself, poured on it? Tell me," I pleaded, " and 
teach me." 

Equally with her voice her face echoed me again. 
"Teach you?" 

" To abandon my false gods. Lead me back to 
peace by the steps you've trod. By so much as they 
must have remained traceable to you, shall I find 
them of interest and profit. They must in fact be 
most remarkable : won't they even — for what / may 
find in them — be more remarkable than those we 
should now be taking together if we hadn't sepa- 
rated, if we hadn't pulled up? " That was a propo- 
sition I could present to her with candour, but be- 
fore her absence of precipitation had permitted 
her much to consider it I had already followed 
it on. " You'll just tell me, however, that since 
I do pull up and turn back with you we shall 
just have not separated. Well, then, so much 
the better — I see you're right. But I want," I 
earnestly declared, " not to lose an inch of the 
journey." 

She watched me now as a Roman lady at the cir- 

277 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

cus may have watched an exemplary Christian. 
" The journey has been a very simple one," she 
said at last. " With my mind made up on a single 
point, it was taken at a stride." 

I was all interest. " On a single point? " Then, 
as, almost excessively dehberate, she still kept me: 
" You mean the still commonplace character of 
Long's — a — consciousness? " 

She had taken at last again the time she required. 
*' Do you know what I think? " 

" It's exactly what I'm pressing you to make in- 
telligible." 

" Well," said Mrs. Briss, " I think you're crazy." 

It naturally struck me. " Crazy? " 

" Crazy." 

I turned it over. " But do you call that intel- 
ligible?" 

She did it justice. " No : I don't suppose it can 
be so for you if you are insane." 

I risked the long laugh which might have seemed 
that of madness. " ' If I am ' is lovely ! " And 
whether or not it was the special sound, in my ear, 
of my hilarity, I remember just wondering if per- 
haps I mightn't be. " Dear woman, it's the point 
at issue! " 

But it was as if she too had been affected. " It's 
not at issue for me now." 

I gave her then the benefit of my stirred specula- 
tion. " It always happens, of course, that one is 

278 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

one's self the last to know. You're perfectly con- 
vinced? " 

She not ungracefully, for an instant, faltered; but 

since I really would have it ! " Oh, so far as 

what we've talked of is concerned, perfectly ! " 

" And it's actually what you've come down then 
to tell me? " 

" Just exactly what. And if it's a surprise to 
you," she added, " that I should have come down — 
why, I can only say I was prepared for anything," 

" Anything? " I smiled. 

" In the way of a surprise." 

I thought; but her preparation was natural, 
though in a moment I could match it. " Do you 
know that's what I was too? " 

" Prepared ? " 

" For anything in the way of a surprise. But 
only from you," I explained. " And of course — 
yes," I mused, " I've got it. If I am crazy," I 
went on — " it's indeed simple." 

She appeared, however, to feel, from the influ- 
ence of my present tone, the impulse, in courtesy, 
to attenuate. " Oh, I don't pretend it's simple ! " 

" No? I thought that was just what you did 
pretend." 

" I didn't suppose," said Mrs. Briss, " that you'd 
like it. I didn't suppose that you'd accept it or 

even listen to it. But I owed it to you " She 

hesitated. 

279 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" You owed it to me to let me know what you 
thought of me even should it prove very disagree- 
able? " 

That perhaps was more than she could adopt. 
" I owed it to myself," she replied with a touch of 
austerity. 

** To let me know I'm demented? " 

" To let you know I'm not." We each looked, I 
think, when she had said it, as if she had done what 
she said. " That's all." 

" All? " I wailed. " Ah, don't speak as if it were 
so little. It's much. It's everything." 

" It's anything you will ! " said Mrs. Briss im- 
patiently. *' Good-night." 

" Good-night? " I was aghast. " You leave me 
on it?" 

She appeared to profess for an instant all the 
freshness of her own that she was pledged to guard. 
" I must leave you on something. I couldn't come 
to spend a whole hour." 

" But do you think it's so quickly done — to per- 
suade a man he's crazy? " 

" I haven't expected to persuade you." 

" Only to throw out the hint? " 

" Well," she admitted, " it would be good if it 
could work in you. But I've told you," she added 
as if to wind up and have done, " what determined 
me. 

" I beg your pardon " — oh, I protested ! " That's 
280 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

just what you've not told me. The reason of your 
change " 

" I'm not speaking," she broke in, " of my 
change." 

" Ah, but / am ! " I declared with a sharpness 
that threw her back for a minute on her reserves. 
" It's your change," I again insisted, " that's the 
interesting thing. If I'm crazy, I must once more 
remind you, you were simply crazy with me; and 
how can I therefore be indifferent to your recovery 
of your wit or let you go without having won from 
you the secret of your remedy? " I shook my head 
with kindness, but with decision. " You mustn't 
leave me till you've placed it in my hand." 

The reserves I had spoken of were not, however, 
to fail her. " I thought you just said that you let 
my inconsistency go." 

" Your moral responsibility for it — perfectly. 
But how can I show a greater indulgence than by 
positively desiring to enter into its history? It's in 
that sense that, as I say," I developed, " I do speak 
of your change. There must have been a given 
moment when the need of it — or when, in other 
words, the truth of my personal state — dawned 
upon you. That moment is the key to your whole 
position — the moment for us to fix." 

" Fix it," said poor Mrs. Briss, " when you 
like ! " 

" I had much rather," I protested, " fix it when 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

you like. I want — you surely must understand if 
I want anything of it at all — to get it absolutely 
right." Then as this plea seemed still not to move 
her, I once more compressed my palms. " You 
won't help me? " 

She bridled at last with a higher toss. " It wasn't 
with such views I came. I don't believe," she went 
on a shade more patiently, " I don't believe — if you 
want to know the reason — that you're really sin- 
cere." 

Here indeed was an affair. " Not sincere — 

" Not properly honest. I mean in giving up." 

" Giving up what? " 

" Why, everything." 

" Everything? Is it a question " — I stared — " of 
thatr " 

" You would if you were honest." 

" Everything? " I repeated. 

Again she stood to it. " Everything." 

" But is that quite the readiness I've professed? " 

" If it isn't then, what is? " 

I thought a little. " Why, isn't it simply a mat- 
ter rather of the renunciation of a confidence? " 

" In your sense and your truth? " This, she in- 
dicated, was all she asked. " Well, what is that but 
everything? " 

" Perhaps," I reflected, " perhaps." In fact, it 
no doubt was. " We'll take it then for everything, 

282 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and it's as so taking it that I renounce. I keep 
nothing at all. Now do you believe I'm honest? " 

She hesitated. " Well — yes, if you say so." 

" Ah," I sighed, " I see you don't! What can I 
do," I asked, " to prove it? " 

" You can easily prove it. You can let me go." 

" Does it strike you," I considered, " that I 
should take your going as a sign of your belief? " 

''Of what else, then?" 

" Why, surely," I promptly replied, " my assent 
to your leaving our discussion where it stands would 
constitute a very different symptom. Wouldn't it 
much rather represent," I inquired, " a failure of 
belief on my own part in your honesty? If you can 
judge me, in short, as only pretending " 

" Why shouldn't you," she put in for me, " also 
judge ineF What have I to gain by pretending? " 

" I'll tell you," I returned, laughing, " if you'll 
tell me what / have." 

She appeared to ask herself if she could, and then 
to decide in the negative. " If I don't understand 
you in any way, of course I don't in that. Put it, at 
any rate," she now rather wearily quavered, " that 
one of us has as little to gain as the other. I believe 
you," she repeated. " There ! " 

" Thanks," I smiled, " for the way you say it. If 
you don't, as you say, understand me," I insisted, 
" it's because you think me crazy. And if you think 
me crazy I don't see how you can leave me." 

283 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

She presently met this. " If I believe you're sin- 
cere in saying you give up I believe you've recov- 
ered. And if I believe you've recovered I don't 
think you crazy. It's simple enough." 

" Then why isn't it simple to understand me? " 

She turned about, and there were moments in her 
embarrassment, now, from which she fairly drew 
beauty. Her awkwardness was somehow noble; 
her sense of her predicament was in itself young. 
" Is it ever? " she charmingly threw out. 

I felt she must see at this juncture how wonderful 
I found her, and even that that impression — one's 
whole consciousness of her personal victory — was a 
force that, in the last resort, was all on her side. 
" It was quite worth your while, this sitting up to 
this hour, to show a fellow how you bloom when 
other women are fagged. If that was really, with 
the truth that we're so pulling about laid bare, what 
you did most want to show, why, then, you've 
splendidly triumphed, and I congratulate and thank 
you. No," I quickly went on, " I daresay, to do 
you justice, the interpretation of my tropes and 
figures isn't ' ever ' perfectly simple. You doubt- 
less have driven me into a corner with my danger- 
ous explosive, and my only fair course must be 
therefore to sit on it till you get out of the room. 
I'm sitting on it now; and I think you'll find you 
can get out as soon as you've told me this. Was 
the moment your change of view dawned upon you 

284 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the moment of our exchanging a while ago, in the 
drawing-room, our few words? " 

The light that, under my last assurances, had so 
considerably revived faded in her a little as she saw 
me again tackle the theme of her inconstancy; but 
the prospect of getting rid of me on these terms 
made my inquiry, none the less, worth trying to 
face. " That moment? " She showed the effort to 
think back. 

I gave her every assistance. " It was when, after 
the music, I had been talking to Lady John. You 
were on a sofa, not far from us, with Gilbert Long; 
and when, on Lady John's dropping me, I made a 
slight movement toward you, you most graciously 
met it by rising and giving me a chance while Mr. 
Long walked away." 

It was as if I had hung the picture before her, 
so that she had fairly to look at it. But the point 
that she first, in her effort, took up was not, super- 
ficially, the most salient. " Mr. Long walked 
away? " 

" Oh, I don't mean to say that that had anything 
to do with it." 

She continued to think. " To do with what? " 

" With the way the situation comes back to me 
now as possibly marking your crisis." 

She wondered. " Was it a ' situation '? " 

" That's just what I'm asking you. Was it? 
Was it the situation? " 

285 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

But she had quite fallen away again. " I remem- 
ber the moment you mean — it was when I said I 
would come to you here. But why should it have 
struck you as a crisis? " 

*' It didn't in the least at the time, for I didn't 
then know you were no longer * with ' me. But in 
the light of what I've since learned from you I seem 
to recover an impression which, on the spot, was 
only vague. The impression," I explained, " of 
your taking a decision that presented some diffi- 
culty, but that was determined by something that 
had then — and even perhaps a little suddenly — 
come up for you. That's the point " — I continued 
to unfold my case — " on which my question bears. 
Was this ' something ' your conclusion, then and 
there, that there's nothing in anything? " 

She kept her distance. " ' In anything '? " 

" And that I could only be, accordingly, out of 
my mind? Come," I patiently pursued; " such a 
perception as that had, at some instant or other, to 
begin; and I'm only trying to aid you to recollect 
when the devil it did ! " 

" Does it particularly matter? " Mrs. Briss in- 
quired. 

I felt my chin. " That depends a little — doesn't 
it? — on what you mean by 'matter'! It matters 
for your meeting my curiosity, and that matters, in 
its turn, as we just arranged, for my releasing you. 
You may ask of course if my curiosity itself matters; 

286 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

but to that, fortunately, my reply can only be of the 
clearest. The satisfaction of my curiosity is the 
pacification of my mind. We've granted, we've ac- 
cepted, I again press upon you, in respect to that 
precarious quantity, its topsy-turvy state. Only 
give me a lead; I don't ask you for more. Let me 
for an instant see play before me any feeble reflec- 
tion whatever of the flash of new truth that unset- 
tled you." 

I thought for a moment that, in her despair, she 
would find something that would do. But she only 
found : " It didn't come in a flash." 

I remained all patience. " It came little by little? 
It began then perhaps earlier in the day than the 
moment to which I allude? And yet," I continued, 
" we were pretty well on in the day, I must keep in 
mind, when I had your last news of your credulity." 

"My credulity?" 

" Call it then, if you don't like the word, your 
sympathy." 

I had given her time, however, to produce at last 
something that, it visibly occurred to her, might 
pass. " As soon as I was not with you — I mean 
with you personally — you never had my sympathy." 

" Is my person then so irresistible? " 

Well, she was brave. " It was. But it's not, 
thank God, now ! " 

" Then there we are again at our mystery ! I 
don't think, you know," I made out for her, " it was 

287 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

my person, really, that gave its charm to my theory; 
I think it was much more my theory that gave its 
charm to my person. My person, I flatter myself, 
has remained through these few hours — hours of 
tension, but of a tension, you see, purely intellectual 
— as good as ever; so that if we're not, even in 
our anomalous situation, in danger from any such 
source, it's simply that my theory is dead and that 
the blight of the rest is involved." 

My words were indeed many, but she plumped 
straight through them. " As soon as I was away 
from you I hated you." 

" Hated mef " 

" Well, hated what you call * the rest ' — hated 
your theory." 

" I see. Yet," I reflected, " you're not at present 
— though you wish to goodness, no doubt, you 
were — away from me." 

" Oh, I don't care now," she said with courage; 
" since — for you see I believe you — we're away 
from your delusions." 

" You wouldn't, in spite of your belief," — I 
smiled at her — " like to be a httle further ofif yet? " 
But before she could answer, and because also, 
doubtless, the question had too much the sound of 
a taunt, I came up, as if for her real convenience, 
quite in another place. " Perhaps my idea — my tim- 
ing, that is, of your crisis — is the result, in my mind, 
of my own association with that particular instant. 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It comes back to me that what I was most full of 
while your face signed to me and your voice then so 
graciously confirmed it, and while too, as I've said, 
Long walked away — what I was most full of, as a 
consequence of another go, just ended, at Lady 
John, was, once more, this same Lady John's want 
of adjustability to the character you and I, in our 
associated speculation of the morning, had so can- 
didly tried to fit her with. I was still even then, 
you see, speculating — all on my own hook, alas ! — 
and it had just rolled over me with renewed force 
that she was nothing whatever, not the least little 
bit, to our purpose. The moment, in other words, 
if you understand, happened to be one of my mo- 
ments; so that, by the same token, I simply won- 
dered if it mightn't likewise have happened to be 
one of yours." 

" It wa's one of mine," Mrs. Briss replied as 
promptly as I could reasonably have expected; " in 
the sense that — as you've only to consider — it was 
to lead more or less directly to these present words 
of ours." 

If I had only to consider, nothing was more easy; 
but each time I considered, I was ready to show, 
the less there seemed left by the act. " Ah, but 
you had then already backed out. Won't you 
understand — for you're a little discouraging — that 
I want to catch you at the earHer stage? " 

" To ' catch ' me? " I had indeed expressions! 
289 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Absolutely catch ! Focus you under the first 
shock of the observation that was to make every- 
thing fall to pieces for you." 

" But I've told you," she stoutly resisted, " that 
there was no ' first ' shock." 

'' Well, then, the second or the third." 

" There was no shock," Mrs. Briss magnificently 
said, " at all." 

It made me somehow break into laughter. " You 
found it so natural then — and you so rather liked it 
— to make up your mind of a sudden that you had 
been steeped in the last intellectual intimacy with 
a maniac? " 

She thought once more, and then, as I myself had 
just previously done, came up in another place. " I 
had at the moment you speak of wholly given up 
any idea of Lady John." 

But it was so feeble it made me smile. " Of 
course you had, you poor innocent ! You couldn't 
otherwise, hours before, have strapped the saddle 
so tight on another woman." 

" I had given up everything," she stubbornly 
continued. 

" It's exactly what, in reference to that juncture, 
I perfectly embrace." 

" Well, even in reference to that juncture," she 
resumed, " you may catch me as much as you Uke." 
With which, suddenly, during some seconds, I saw 
her hold herself for a leap. " You talk of * focuss- 

290 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

ing,' but what else, even in those minutes, were you 
in fact engaged in? " 

" Ah, then, you do recognise them," I cried — 
" those minutes? " 

She took her jump, though with something of a 
flop. '' Yes — as, consenting thus to be catechised, 
I cudgel my brain for your amusement — I do recog- 
nise them. I remember what I thought. You 
focussed — I felt you focus. I saw you wonder 
whereabouts, in what you call our associated spec- 
ulation, I would by that time be. I asked myself 
whether you'd understand if I should try to convey 
to you simply by my expression such a look as 
would tell you all. By 'all' I meant the fact that, 
sorry as I was for you — or perhaps for myself — it 
had struck me as only fair to let you know as 
straight as possible that I was nowhere. That was 
why I stared so, and I of course couldn't explain 
to you," she lucidly pursued, " to whom my stare 
had reference." 

I hung on her lips. " But you can now? " 

" Perfectly. To Mr. Long." 

I remained suspended. " Ah, but this is lovely ! 
It's what I want." 

I saw I should have more of it, and more in fact 
came. " You were saying just now what you were 
full of, and I can do the same. I was full of him." 

I, on my side, was now full of eagerness. " Yes? 
He had left you full as he walked away? " 

291 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

She winced a little at this renewed evocation of 
his retreat, but she took it as she had not done be- 
fore, and I felt that with another push she would 
be fairly afloat. " He had reason to walk ! " 

I wondered. " What had you said to him? " 

She pieced it out. " Nothing — or very little. 
But I had listened." 

" And to whatr " 

" To what he says. To his platitudes." 

" His platitudes? " I stared. " Long's? " 

" Why, don't you know he's a prize fool? " 

I mused, sceptical but reasonable. " He was.'* 

" He is! " 

Mrs. Briss was superb, but, as I quickly felt I 
might remind her, there was her possibly weak 
judgment. "Your confidence is splendid; only 
mustn't I remember that your sense of the finer 
kinds of cleverness isn't perhaps absolutely secure? 
Don't you know? — you also, till just now, thought 
me a prize fool." 

If I had hoped, however, here to trip her up, I 
had reckoned without the impulse, and even per- 
haps the example, that she properly owed to me. 
" Oh, no — not anything of that sort, you, at all. 
Only an intelligent man gone wrong." 

I followed, but before I caught up, " Whereas 
Long's only a stupid man gone right? " I threw out. 

It checked her too briefly, and there was indeed 
something of my own it brought straight back. " I 

292 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

thought that just what you told me, this morning or 
yesterday, was that you had never known a case of 
the conversion of an idiot." 

I laughed at her readiness. Well, I had wanted 
to make her fight ! " It's true it would have been 
the only one." 

" Ah, you'll have to do without it ! " Oh, she 
was brisk now. " And if you know what I think 
of him, you know no more than Jie does." 

" You mean you told him? " 

She hung fire but an instant. " I told him, prac- 
tically — and it was in fact all I did have to say to 
him. It was enough, however, and he disgustedly 
left me on it. Then it was that, as you gave me the 
chance, I tried to telegraph you — to say to you on 
the spot and under the sharp impression : ' What 
on earth do you mean by your nonsense? It 
doesn't hold water ! ' It's a pity I didn't succeed ! " 
she continued — for she had become almost voluble. 
" It would have settled the question, and I should 
have gone to bed." 

I weighed it with the grimace that, I feared, had 
become almost as fixed as Mrs. Server's. " It 
would have settled the question perhaps; but I 
should have lost this impression of you." 

" Oh, this impression of me ! " 

" Ah, but don't undervalue it : it's what I want ! 
What was it then Long had said? " 

She had it more and more, but she had it as 
293 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

nothing- at all. " Not a word to repeat — you 
wouldn't believe ! He does say nothing at all. 
One can't remember. It's what I mean. I tried 
him on purpose, while I thought of you. But he's 
perfectly stupid. I don't see how we can have 
fancied ! " I had interrupted her by the move- 
ment with which again, uncontrollably tossed on 
one of my surges of certitude, I turned away. Hoiv 
deep they must have been in together for her to 
have so at last gathered herself up, and in how 
doubly interesting a light, above all, it seemed to 
present Long for the future ! That was, while I 
warned myself, what I most read in — literally an im- 
plication of the enhancement of this latter side of 
the prodigy. If his cleverness, under the alarm 
that, first stirring their consciousness but dimly, had 
so swiftly developed as to make next of each a mir- 
ror for the other, and then to precipitate for them, 
in some silence deeper than darkness, the exchange 
of recognitions, admissions and, as they certainly 
would have phrased it, tips — if his excited acute- 
ness was henceforth to protect itself by dissimula- 
tion, what wouldn't perhaps, for one's diversion, be 
the new spectacle and wonder? I could in a man- 
ner already measure this larger play by the ampli- 
tude freshly determined in Mrs. Briss, and I was 
for a moment actually held by the thought of the 
possible finish our friend would find it in him to 
give to a represented, a fictive ineptitude. The 

294 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

sharpest jostle to my thought, in this rush, might 
well have been, I confess, the reflection that as it 
was I who had arrested, who had spoiled their un- 
consciousness, so it was natural they should fight 
against me for a possible life in the state I had given 
them instead. I had spoiled their unconsciousness, 
I had destroyed it, and it was consciousness alone 
that could make them effectively cruel. Therefore, 
if they were cruel, it was I who had determined it, 
inasmuch as, consciously, they could only want, 
they could only intend, to live. Wouldn't that 
question have been, I managed even now to ask 
myself, the very basis on which they had inscrutably 
come together? " It's life, you know," each had 
said to the other, "and I, accordingly, can only cling 
to mine. But you, poor dear — shall you give up? " 
" Give up?" the other had replied; "for what do 
you take me? I shall fight by your side, please, 
and we can compare and exchange weapons and 
manoeuvres, and you may in every way count upon 
me." 

That was what, with greater vividness, was for 
the rest of the occasion before me, or behind me; 
and that I had done it all and had only myself to 
thank for it was what, from this minute, by the same 
token, was more and more for me the inner essence 
of Mrs. Briss's attitude. I know not what heavy 
admonition of my responsibility had thus suddenly 
descended on me; but nothing, under it, was indeed 

295 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

more sensible than that practically it paralysed me. 
And I could only say to myself that this was the 
price — the price of the secret success, the lonely 
liberty and the intellectual joy. There were things 
that for so private and splendid a revel — that of the 
exclusive king with his Wagner opera — I could 
only let go, and the special torment of my case was 
that the condition of light, of the satisfaction of 
curiosity and of the attestation of triumph, was in 
this direct way the sacrifice of feeling. There was 
no point at which my assurance could, by the sci- 
entific method, judge itself complete enough not to 
regard feeling as an interference and, in conse- 
quence, as a possible check. If it had to go I knew 
well who went with it, but I wasn't there to save 
them. I was there to save my priceless pearl of an 
inquiry and to harden, to that end, my heart. I 
should need indeed all my hardness, as well as my 
brightness, moreover, to meet Mrs. Briss on the 
high level to which I had at last induced her to 
mount, and, even while I prolonged the movement 
by which I had momentarily stayed her, the inter- 
mission of her speech became itself for me a hint 
of the peculiar pertinence of caution. It lasted long 
enough, this drop, to suggest that her attention was 
the sharper for my having turned away from it, and 
I should have feared a renewed challenge if she 
hadn't, by good luck, presently gone on: " There's 
really nothing in him at all ! " 

296 



XIV 

T HAD faced her again just in time to take it, and 
-■- I immediately made up my mind how best to 
do so. " Then I go utterly to pieces ! " 

" You shouldn't have perched yourself," she 
laughed — she could by this time almost coarsely 
laugh — " in such a preposterous place ! " 

" Ah, that's my affair," I returned, " and if I ac- 
cept the consequences I don't quite see what you've 
to say to it. That I do accept them — so far as I 
make them out as not too intolerable and you as not 
intending them to be — that I do accept them is 
what I've been trying to signify to you. Only my 
fall," I added, " is an inevitable shock. You re- 
marked to me a few minutes since that you didn't 
recover yourself in a flash. I differ from you, you 
see, in that / do; I take my collapse all at once. 
Here then I am. I'm smashed. I don't see, as I 
look about me, a piece I can pick up. I don't at- 
tempt to account for my going wrong; I don't 
attempt to account for yours with me; I don't at- 
tempt to account for anything. If Long is just 
what he always was it settles the matter, and the 
special clincher for us can be but your honest final 

297 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

impression, made precisely more aware of itself by 
repentance for the levity with which you had origi- 
nally yielded to my contagion." 

She didn't insist on her repentance; she was too 
taken up with the facts themselves. " Oh, but 
add to my impression everyone else's impression! 
Has anyone noticed anything? " 

" Ah, I don't know what anyone has noticed. I 
haven't," I brooded, " ventured — as you know — to 
ask anyone." 

" Well, if you had you'd have seen — seen, I mean, 
all they don't see. If they had been conscious 
they'd have talked." 

I thought. " To me? " 

"Well, I'm not sure to you; people have such 
a notion of what you embroider on things that 
they're rather afraid to commit themselves or to 
lead you on: they're sometimes in, you know," she 
luminously reminded me, " for more than they bar- 
gain for, than they quite know what to do with, or 
than they care to have on their hands." 

I tried to do justice to this account of myself. 
" You mean I see so much? " 

It was a delicate matter, but she risked it. " Don't 
you sometimes see horrors? " 

I wondered. " Well, names are a convenience. 
People catch me in the act? " 

" They certainly think you critical." 

" And is criticism the vision of horrors? " 
298 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

She couldn't quite be sure where I was taking 
her. " It isn't, perhaps, so much that you see 
them " 

I started. "As that I perpetrate them?" 

She was sure now, however, and wouldn't have 
it, for she was serious. " Dear no — you don't per- 
petrate anything. Perhaps it would be better if 
you did ! " she tossed off with an odd laugh. " But 
— always by people's idea — you like them." 

I followed. "Horrors?" 

" Well, you don't " 

" Yes ? " 

But she wouldn't be hurried now. " You take 
them too much for what they are. You don't seem 
to want " 

" To come down on them strong? Oh, but I 
often do ! " 

" So much the better then." 

" Though I do like — whether for that or not," I 
hastened to confess, " to look them first well in the 
face." 

Our eyes met, with this, for a minute, but she 
made nothing of that. " When they have no face, 
then, you can't do it ! It isn't at all events now 
a question," she went on, " of people's keeping any- 
thing back, and you're perhaps in any case not the 
person to whom it would first have come." 

I tried to think then who the person would be. 
" It would have come to Long himself? " 

299 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

But she was impatient of this. " Oh, one doesn't 
know what comes — or what doesn't — to Long him- 
self ! I'm not sure he's too modest to misrepresent 
— if he had the intelligence to play a part." 

" Which he hasn't ! " I concluded. 

" Which he hasn't. It's to me they might have 
spoken — or to each other." 

" But I thought you exactly held they had chat- 
tered in accounting for his state by the influence of 
Lady John." 

She got the matter instantly straight. " Not a 
bit. That chatter was mine only — and produced 
to meet yours. There had so, by your theory, to be 
a woman " 

" That, to oblige me, you invented herf Pre- 
cisely. But I thought " 

" You needn't have thought ! " Mrs. Briss broke 
in. " I didn't invent her." 

" Then what are you talking about? " 

" I didn't invent her," she repeated, looking at 
me hard. " She's true." I echoed it in vagueness, 
though instinctively again in protest; yet I held my 
breath, for this was really the point at which I felt 
my companion's forces most to have mustered. 
Her manner now moreover gave me a great idea of 
them, and her whole air was of taking immediate 
advantage of my impression. " Well, see here : 
since you've wanted it, I'm afraid that, however lit- 
tle you may like it, you'll have to take it. You've 

300 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

pressed me for explanations and driven me much 
harder than you must have seen I found convenient. 
If I've seemed to beat about the bush it's because 
I hadn't only myself to think of. One can be sim- 
ple for one's self — one can't be, always, for others." 

" Ah, to whom do you say it? " I encouragingly 
sighed; not even yet quite seeing for what issue she 
was heading. 

She continued to make for the spot, whatever it 
was, with a certain majesty. " I should have pre- 
ferred to tell you nothing more than what I have 
told you. I should have preferred to close our con- 
versation on the simple announcement of my re- 
covered sense of proportion. But you have, I see, 
got me in too deep." 

" O-oh ! " I courteously attenuated. 

" You've made of me," she lucidly insisted, " too 
big a talker, too big a thinker, of nonsense." 

"' Thank you," I laughed, " for intimating that I 
trifle so agreeably." 

" Oh, you've appeared not to mind ! But let me 
then at last not fail of the luxury of admitting that 
/ mind. Yes, I mind particularly. I may be bad, 
but I've a grain of gumption." 

" ' Bad '? " It seemed more closely to concern 
me. 

" Bad I may be. In fact," she pursued at this 
high pitch and pressure, " there's no doubt what- 
ever I am." 

301 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" I'm delighted to hear it," I cried, " for it was 
exactly something strong I wanted of you ! " 

" It is then strong " — and I could see indeed she 
was ready to satisfy me. *' You've worried me for 
my motive and harassed me for my ' moment,' and 
I've had to protect others and, at the cost of a decent 
appearance, to pretend to be myself half an idiot. 
I've had even, for the same purpose — if you must 
have it — to depart from the truth ; to give you, that 
is, a false account of the manner of my escape from 
your tangle. But now the truth shall be told, and 
others can take care of themselves ! " She had so 
wound herself up with this, reached so the point of 
fairly heaving with courage and candour, that I for 
an instant almost miscalculated her direction and 
believed she was really throwing up her cards. It 
was as if she had decided, on some still finer lines, 
just to rub my nose into what I had been spelling 
out; which would have been an anticipation of my 
own journey's crown of the most disconcerting sort. 
I wanted my personal confidence, but I wanted 
nobody's confession, and without the journey's 
crown where zvas the personal confidence? With- 
out the personal confidence, moreover, where was 
the personal honour? That would be really the sin- 
gle thing to which I could attach authority, for a 
confession might, after all, be itself a lie. Anybody, 
at all events, could fit the shoe to one. My friend's 
intention, however, remained but briefly equivocal; 

302 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

my danger passed, and I recognised in its place a 
still richer assurance. It was not the unnamed, in 
short, who were to be named. " Lady John is the 
woman." 

Yet even this was prodigious. " But I thought 
your present position was just that she's not! " 

" Lady John is the woman," Mrs. Briss again 
announced. 

" But I thought your present position was just 
that nobody is ! " 

" Lady John is the woman," she a third time 
declared. 

It naturally left me gaping. " Then there is 
one? " I cried between bewilderment and joy. 

" A woman? There's Jier! " ]\Irs. Briss replied 
with more force than grammar. *' I know," she 
briskly, almost breezily added, " that I said she 
wouldn't do (as I had originally said she would do 
better than any one), when you a while ago men- 
tioned her. But that was to save her." 

" And you don't care now," I smiled, " if she's 
lost ! " 

She hesitated. " She is lost. But she can take 
care of herself." 

I could but helplessly think of her. " I'm afraid 
indeed that, with what you've done with her, / can't 
take care of her. But why is she now to the pur- 
pose," I articulately wondered, " any more than she 
was? " 

303 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Why? On the very system you yourself laid 
down. When we took him for brilliant, she couldn't 
be. But now that we see him as he is " 

" We can only see her also as she is? " Well, I 
tried, as far as my amusement would permit, so to 
see her; but still there were difficulties. " Possibly ! " 
I at most conceded. " Do you owe your discovery, 
however, wholly to my system? My system, where 
so much made for protection," I explained, " wasn't 
intended to have the effect of exposure." 

" It appears to have been at all events intended," 
my companion returned, " to have the effect of 
driving me to the wall; and the consequence of 
that effect is nobody's fault but your own." 

She was all logic now, and I could easily see, be- 
tween my light and my darkness, how she would 
remain so. Yet I was scarce satisfied. *' And it's 
only on ' that effect ' ? " 

" That I've made up my mind? " She was 
positively free at last to enjoy my discomfort. 
" Wouldn't it be surely, if your ideas were worth 
anything, enough? But it isn't," she added, " only 
on that. It's on something else." 

I had after an instant extracted from this the sin- 
gle meaning it could appear to yield. " I'm to 
understand that you knowf " 

" That they're intimate enough for anything? " 
She faltered, but she brought it out. " I know." 

It was the oddest thing in the world for a little, 
304 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

the way this affected me without my at all believing 
it. It was preposterous, hang though it would with 
her somersault, and she had quite succeeded in giv- 
ing it the note of sincerity. It was the mere sound 
of it that, as I felt even at the time, made it a little 
of a blow — a blow of the smart of which I was con- 
scious just long enough inwardly to murmur: 
" What if she should be right? " She had for these 
seconds the advantage of stirring within me the 
memory of her having indeed, the day previous, at 
Paddington, " known " as I hadn't. It had been 
really on what she then knew that we originally 
started, and an element of our start had been that 
I admired her freedom. The form of it, at least — 
so beautifully had she recovered herself — was 
all there now. Well, I at any rate reflected, it 
wasn't the form that need trouble me, and I 
quickly enough put her a question that related 
only to the matter. " Of course if she is — it is 
smash! " 

" And haven't you yet got used to its being? " 
I kept my eyes on her; I traced the buried figure 
in the ruins. " She's good enough for a fool; and 
so " — I made it out — " is he ! If he is the same ass 
— yes — they might be." 

" And he is," said Mrs. Briss, " the same ass ! " 
I continued to look at her. " He would have no 
need then of her having transformed and inspired 
him." 

305 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" Or of her having ddovmed and idiotised her- 
self," my friend subjoined. 

Oh, how it sharpened my look ! " No, no — she 
wouldn't need that." 

"The great point is that Jie wouldn't!" Mrs. 
Briss laughed. 

I kept it up. " She would do perfectly." 

Mrs. Briss was not behind. " My dear man, she 
has got to do ! " 

This was brisker still, but I held my way. " Al- 
most anyone would do." 

It seemed for a little, between humour and sad- 
ness, to strike her. " Almost anyone zvould. Still," 
she less pensively declared, " we want the right 
one." 

" Surely; the right one" — I could only echo it. 
'' But how," I then proceeded, " has it happily been 
confirmed to you? " 

It pulled her up a trifle. " ' Confirmed ' ? " 

" That he's her lover." 

My eyes had been meeting hers without, as it 
were, hers quite meeting mine. But at this there 
had to be intercourse. '' By my husband." 

It pulled me up a trifle. *' Brissenden knows? " 

She hesitated; then, as if at my tone, gave a 
laugh. " Don't you suppose I've told him? " 

I really couldn't but admire her. '' Ah — so you 
have talked ! " 

It didn't confound her. " One's husband isn't 
306 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

talk. You're cruel moreover," she continued, " to 
my joke. It was Briss, poor dear, who talked — 
though, I mean, only to me. He knows." 

I cast about. " Since when? " 

But she had it ready. " Since this evening," 

Once more I couldn't but smile. " Just in time 
then ! And the zuay he knows ? " 

" Oh, the way ! " — she had at this a slight drop. 
But she came up again. " I take his word." 

" You haven't then asked him? " 

" The beauty of it was — half an hour ago, up- 
stairs-:— that I hadn't to ask. He came out with it 
himself, and that — to give you the whole thing — 
was, if you Hke, my moment. He dropped it on 
me," she continued to explain, " without in the 
least, sweet innocent, knowing what he was doing; 
more, at least, that is, than give her away." 

" Which," I concurred, " was comparatively 
nothing ! " 

But she had no ear for irony, and she made out 
still more of her story. " He's simple — but he 
sees." 

" And when he sees " — I completed the picture — 
" he luckily tells." 

She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but 
without prejudice to his acuteness and to what had 
been in him moreover a natural revulsion. " He 
has seen, in short; there comes some chance when 
one does. His, as luckily as you please, came this 

307 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

evening. If you ask me what it showed him you 
ask more than Vve either cared or had time to ask. 
Do you consider, for that matter " — she put it to 
me — '* that one does ask? " As her high smooth- 
ness — such was the wonder of this reascendancy — 
almost deprived me of my means, she was wise 
and gentle with me. " Let us leave it alone." 

I fairly, while my look at her turned rueful, 
scratched my head. " Don't you think it a little 
late for that? " 

"Late for everything!" she impatiently said. 
" But there you are." 

I fixed the floor. There indeed I was. But I 
tried to stay there — just there only — as short a time 
as possible. Something, moreover, after all, caught 
me up. " But if Brissenden already knew ? " 

" If he knew ? " She still gave me, without 

prejudice to her ingenuity — and indeed it was a part 
of this — all the work she could. 

" Why, that Long and Lady John were thick? " 

" Ah, then," she cried, " you admit they are! " 

" Am I not admitting everything you tell me? 
But the more I admit," I explained, " the more I 
must understand. It's to admit, you see, that I in- 
quire. If Briss came down with Lady John yester- 
day to oblige Mr. Long " 

" He didn't come," she interrupted, " to oblige 
Mr. Long!" 

" Well, then, to oblige Lady John herself " 

308 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

" He didn't come to oblige Lady John herself! " 

" Well, then, to oblige his clever wife " 

" He didn't come to oblige his clever wiie ! He 
came," said Mrs. Briss, " just to amuse himself. 
He has his amusements, and it's odd," she remark- 
ably laughed, " that you should grudge them to 
him ! " 

" It would be odd indeed if I did ! But put his 
proceeding," I continued, " on any ground you 
like; you described to me the purpose of it as a 
screening of the pair." 

" I described to you the purpose of it as nothing 
of the sort. I didn't describe to you the purpose 
of it," said Mrs. Briss, " at all. I described to you," 
she triumphantly set forth, " the effect of it — which 
is a very different thing." 

I could only meet her with admiration. " You're 
of an astuteness ! " 

" Of course I'm of an astuteness ! I see effects. 
And I saw that one. How much Briss himself had 
seen it is, as I've told you, another matter; and what 
he had, at any rate, quite taken the affair for was 
the sort of flirtation in which, if one is a friend to 
either party, and one's own feelings are not at stake, 
one may now and then give people a lift. Haven't 
I asked you before," she demanded, " if you suppose 
he would have given one had he had an idea where 
these people aref " 

" I scarce know what you have asked me be- 

309 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

fore ! " I sighed; " and ' where they are ' is just what 
you haven't told me." 

" It's where my husband was so annoyed unmis- 
takably to discover them." And as if she had quite 
fixed the point she passed to another. " He's pe- 
culiar, dear old Briss, but in a way by which, if one 
uses him — by which, I mean, if one depends on 
him — at all, one gains, I think, more than one loses. 
Up to a certain point, in any case that's the least 
a case for subtlety, he sees nothing at all; but be- 
yond it — when once he does wake up — he'll go 
through a house. Nothing then escapes him, and 
what he drags to light is sometimes appalling." 

" Rather," I thoughtfully responded — " since 
witness this occasion ! " 

" But isn't the interest of this occasion, as I've 
already suggested," she propounded, " simply that 
it makes an end, bursts a bubble, rids us of an in- 
cubus and permits us to go to bed in peace? I 
thank God," she moralised, " for dear old Briss 
to-night." 

" So do I," I after a moment returned; " but I 
shall do so with still greater fervour if you'll have 
for the space of another question a still greater 
patience." With which, as a final movement from 
her seemed to say how much this was to ask, I had 
on my own side a certain exasperation of soreness 
for all I had to acknowledge — even were it mere 
acknowledgment — that she had brought rattling 

310 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

down. " Remember," I pleaded, " that you're cost- 
ing me a perfect palace of thought ! " 

I could see too that, held unexpectedly by some- 
thing in my tone, she really took it in.. Couldn't 
I even almost see that, for an odd instant, she re- 
gretted the blighted pleasure of the pursuit of truth 
with me? I needed, at all events, no better proof 
either of the sweet or of the bitter in her compre- 
hension than the accent with which she replied : 
" Oh, those who live in glass houses " 

" Shouldn't — no, I know they shouldn't — throw 
stones; and that's precisely why I don't." I had 
taken her immediately up, and I held her by it and 
by something better still. " You, from your fortress 
of granite, can chuck them about as you will ! All 
the more reason, however," I quickly added, " that, 
before my frail, but, as I maintain, quite sublime 
structure, you honour me, for a few seconds, with 
an intelligent look at it. I seem myself to see it 
again, perfect in every part," I pursued, " even while 
I thus speak to you, and to feel afresh that, weren't 
the wretched accident of its weak foundation, it 
wouldn't have the shadow of a flaw. I've spoken 
of it in my conceivable regret," I conceded, " as 
already a mere heap of disfigured fragments; but 
that was the extravagance of my vexation, my de- 
spair. It's in point of fact so beautifully fitted that 
it comes apart piece by piece — which, so far as that 
goes, you've seen it do in the last quarter of an hour 

311 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

at your own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one 
by one, yourself and watching me stack them along 
the ground. They're not even in this state — see ! " 
I wound up — " a pile of ruins ! " I wound up, as 
I say, but only for long enough to have, with the 
vibration, the exaltation, of my eloquence, my 
small triumph as against her great one. " I should 
almost like, piece by piece, to hand them back to 
you." And this time I completed my figure. " I 
believe that, for the very charm of it, you'd find 
yourself placing them by your own sense in their 
order and rearing once more the splendid pile. Will 
you take just one of them from me again," I insisted, 
*' and let me see if only to have it in your hands 
doesn't positively start you ofif? That's what I 
meant just now by asking you for another answer." 
She had remained silent, as if really in the presence 
of the rising magnificence of my metaphor, and it 
was not too late for the one chance left me. 
" There was nothing, you know, I had so fitted as 
your account of poor Mrs. Server when, on our see- 
ing them, from the terrace, together below, you 
struck oflf your explanation that old Briss was Jier 
screen for Long." 

" Fitted? " — and there was sincerity in her sur- 
prise. " I thought my stupid idea the one for 
which you had exactly no use ! " 

" I had no use," I instantly concurred, " for your 
stupid idea, but I had great use for your stupidly, 

312 



THE SACRED FOUNT, 

alas ! having it. That fitted beautifully," I smiled, 
" till the piece came out. And even now," I added, 
" I don't feel it quite accounted for." 

" Their being there together? " 

" No. Your not liking it that they were." 

She stared. *' Not liking it? " 

I could see how little indeed she minded now, but 
I also kept the thread of my own intellectual history. 
" Yes. Your not liking it is what I speak of as the 
piece. I hold it, you see, up before you. What, 
artistically, would you do with it? " 

But one might take a horse to water ! I 

held it up before her, but I couldn't make her look 
at it. " How do you know what I mayn't, or may, 
have liked?" 

It did bring me to. " Because you were con- 
scious of not telling me? Well, even if you 
didn't !" 

" That made no difference," she inquired with 
a generous derision, " because you could always 
imagine? Of course you could always imagine — 
which is precisely what is the matter with you ! 
But I'm surprised at your coming to me with it 
once more as evidence of anything." 

I stood rebuked, and even more so than I showed 
her, for she need, obviously, only decline to take 
one of my counters to deprive it of all value as coin. 
When she pushed it across I had but to pocket it 
again. " It is the weakness of my case," I feebly 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

and I daresay awkwardly mused at her, " that any 
particular thing you don't grant me becomes 
straightway the strength of yours. Of course, 
however " — and I gave myself a shake — " I'm ab- 
solutely rejoicing (am I not?) in the strength of 
yours. The weakness of my own is what, under 
your instruction, I'm now going into; but don't you 
see how much weaker it will show if I draw from 
you the full expression of your indifference? How 
could you in fact care when what you were at the 
very moment urging on me so hard was the ex- 
travagance of Mrs. Server's conduct? That extrav- 
agance then proved her, to your eyes, the woman 
who had a connection with Long to keep the world 
off the scent of — though you maintained that in 
spite of the dust she kicked up by it she was, at a 
pinch, now and then to be caught with him. That 
instead of being caught with him she was caught 
only with Brissenden annoyed you naturally for the 
moment; but what was that annoyance compared 
to your appreciation of her showing — by undertak- 
ing your husband, of all people! — just the more 
markedly as extravagant? " 

She had been sufficiently interested this time to 
follow me. " What was it indeed? " 

I greeted her acquiescence, but I insisted. " And 
yet if she is extravagant — what do you do with it? " 

" I thought you wouldn't hear of it ! " she ex- 
claimed. 

3M 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

I sought to combine firmness with my mildness. 
" What do you do with it? " 

But she could match me at this. " I thought 
you wouldn't hear of it ! " 

" It's not a question of my dispositions. It's a 
question of her having been, or not been, for you 
' all over the place,' and of everyone's also being, for 
you, on the chatter about it. You go by that in 
respect to Long — by your holding, that is, that 
nothing has been noticed; therefore mustn't you go 
by it in respect to her — since I understand from you 
that everything has?" 

" Everything always is," Mrs. Briss agreeably re- 
plied, " in a place and a party like this; but so little 
— anything in particular — that, with people moving 
' every which ' way, it comes to the same as if noth- 
ing was. Things are not, also, gouged out to your 
tune, and it depends, still further, on what you mean 
by ' extravagant.' " 

" I mean whatever you yourself meant." 

" Well, I myself mean no longer, you know, 
what I did mean." 

" She isn't then ? " 

But suddenly she was almost sharp with me. 
"Isn't what?" 

" What the woman we so earnestly looked for 
would have to be." 

"All gone?" She had hesitated, but she went 
on with decision. " No, she isn't all gone, since 

315 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

there was enough of her left to make up to poor 
Briss." 

" Precisely — and it's just what we saw, and just 
what, with her other dashes of the same sort, led 
us to have to face the question of her being — well, 
what I say. Or rather," I added, " what you say. 
That is," I amended, to keep perfectly straight, 
" what you say you don't say." 

I took indeed too many precautions for my friend 
not to have to look at them. '' Extravagant? " 
The irritation of the word had grown for her, yet I 
risked repeating it, and with the efTect of its giving 
her another pause. '' I tell you she isn't that ! " 

" Exactly; and it's only to ask you what in the 
world then she is." 

" She's horrid ! " said Mrs. Briss. 

" ' Horrid '? " I gloomily echoed. 

" Horrid. It wasn't," she then developed with 
decision, " a ' dash,' as you say, ' of the same sort ' — 
though goodness knows of what sort you mean : it 
wasn't, to be plain, a ' dash ' at all." My compan- 
ion was plain. " She settled. She stuck." And 
finally, as I could but echo her again : " She made 
love to him." 

" But— a— really? " 

" Really. That's how I knew." 

I was at sea. " ' Knew '? But you saw." 

" I knew — that is I learnt — more than I saw. I 
knew she couldn't be gone." 

316 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

It in fact brought light. " Knew it by himf " 

" He told me," said Mrs. Briss. 

It brought light, but it brought also, I fear, for 
me, another queer grimace. " Does he then regu- 
larly tell? " 

" Regularly. But what he tells," she did herself 
the justice to declare, " is not always so much to the 
point as the two things I've repeated to you." 

Their weight then suggested that I should have 
them over again. " His revelation, in the first 
place, of Long and Lady John? " 

" And his revelation in the second " — she spoke 
of it as a broad joke — " of May Server and him- 
self." 

There was something in her joke that was a chill 
to my mind; but I nevertheless played up. " And 
what does he say that's further interesting about 
thatf " 

" Why, that she's awfully sharp." 

I gasped — she turned it out so. " She — Mrs. 
Server? " 

It made her, however, equally stare. " Why, 
isn't it the very thing you maintained?" 

I felt her dreadful logic, but I couldn't — with my 
exquisite image all contrasted, as in a flash from 
flint, with this monstrosity — so much as entertain 
her question. I could only stupidly again sound 
it. "Awfully sharp?" 

" You after all then now don't? " It was she 
317 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

herself whom the words at present described ! 
" Then what on earth do you think? " The strange 
mixture in my face naturally made her ask it, but 
everything, within a minute, had somehow so given 
way under the touch of her supreme assurance, the 
presentation of her own now finished system, that I 
dare say I couldn't at the moment have in the least 
trusted myself to tell her. She left me, however, 
in fact, small time — she only took enough, with her 
negations arrayed and her insolence recaptured, to 
judge me afresh, which she did as she gathered her- 
self up into the strength of twenty-five. I didn't 
after all — it appeared part of my smash — know the 
weight of her husband's years, but I knew the 
weight of my own. They might have been a thou- 
sand, and nothing but the sense of them would in 
a moment, I saw, be left me. " My poor dear, you 
are crazy, and I bid you good-night ! " 

Nothing but the sense of them — on my taking 
it from her without a sound and watching her, 
through the lighted rooms, retreat and disappear — 
was at first left me; but after a minute something 
else came, and I grew conscious that her verdict 
lingered. She had so had the last word that, to get 
out of its planted presence, I shook myself, as I had 
done before, from my thought. When once I had 
started to my room indeed — and to preparation for 
a livelier start as soon as the house should stir again 
— I almost breathlessly hurried. Such a last word 

318 



THE SACRED FOUNT 

— the word that put me altogether nowhere — was 
too unacceptable not to prescribe afresh that prompt 
test of escape to other air for which I had earlier 
in the evening seen so much reason. I should cer- 
tainly never again, on the spot, quite hang together, 
even though it wasn't really that I hadn't three 
times her method. What I too fatally lacked was 
her tone. 



THE END 



319 



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